


Reliving Classic: Part II

by DiscordedEdd



Category: Hilda (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Mention of Death, detailed depictions of blood and gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:01:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25755541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscordedEdd/pseuds/DiscordedEdd
Kudos: 4





	1. Normal

Reliving (Classic): Part II

Created by DiscordedEdd,

Written by Trevor Owens, Bidoof64, DiscordedEdd, leaf_sketches, and Volume Control  
Edited by Lovelin

Part Two: Rilda - Chapter One: Normal

A few months have passed since the reform of society in Trolberg. Christmas came by, and Hilda and Retail happened to get a TV and a Nintendo GameCube, along with Luigi’s Mansion and Super Smash Bros: Melee. Of course, the two never gave up with their outdoor adventures, yet they always had fun playing those games once in a while.

In January, a 7-Eleven store opened up, which Retail mentioned that it was the same one she used to work at, so she ended up applying to work there. After some time, Retail got the job as a cashier.

During the time when Hilda went back to school, she usually left her red and grey sweater at home since Ahlberg reinforced their uniform policy. She saw hallways of kids with their bodies changed. Limbs lost, some people vanished altogether, you name it.

Hilda did find out that some friends did lose their parents and had to get adoptive parents, such as Trevor. Speaking of Trevor, the teen became on good terms with Hilda after she saved his life from the bus crash and Hilda even helped him out when it came to learning how to use crutches because of his lost leg.

Some kids had their height changed as well. One kid who was once 6ft ended up being 11ft because of “The Anomaly” and he had a hard time trying to adapt to the school building and always had to sit in the back of classrooms. This one time when class ended, Hilda actually changed her size to the guy’s own to show him that everything is alright, which gave him a sense of confidence.

Some teachers did vanish and were replaced with new ones, or the classes were cancelled entirely, so the administration could train replacements as well. Classes were usually the same, yet there was an uncomfortable sense of lost souls in the building to the point where classes often stopped due to a kid sobbing randomly and needing help to recover.

As school would end, Hilda would get on a bus filled with injured kids and they would often talk about “The Anomaly” itself and the bus crash that happened, too. Many would talk to Hilda about her abilities and she would show them her limbs extending, but when it came to size shifting, she would decline due to the fact that the increased weight would cause the bus to break down.

When Hilda got home, she was welcomed by her reformed family. Alfur would show up to hug her, Twig would lick her face, Johanna would have cucumber sandwiches ready, and Retail was always there to welcome her back home with Hilda’s sweater in her hands.

After Hilda would eat the sandwiches, she would often take a shower and then get into pajamas with her sweater over her shirt. The day would simply end with Hilda hanging out with Retail playing Luigi’s Mansion or Smash. However, Retail wouldn’t really be there on some days since she would be chosen to close up shop in the 7-Eleven.

If that was to happen, Hilda would have Alfur be with her and she’d teach him how to play games which was always fun to watch him mess up and be taught on where to go or what to do. On the weekends where Retail is free for Saturday and Sunday, Hilda and Retail would spend the entire day together along with everyone else. This cycle ultimately became Hilda’s life after everyone said their truths and welcomed each other.

In March, life was still good for Retail, Hilda, and the makeshift family. One day, Hilda arrived back at home from school to notice that Retail was once again gone so that only meant one thing: She was chosen to close up shop. 

“Hey Mum.”

“Yeah, Hilda?” Johanna asked while she was on the couch, watching a typical drama show while Alfur was beside her. 

“How about I walk down to the 7-Eleven and see what Retail is up to after I take a shower?”

“Well, as long as things aren't dark and the store isn’t far. I guess you and Twig could go there on your own,” Johanna answered. Hilda thanked her mother and soon after, she took a shower and got into more normal clothing like black pants, a blue shirt, and her sweater like always. Hilda said her goodbyes while putting on her shoes and then her and Twig left the apartment to go to find Retail at the 7-Eleven.

With the city being reformed to a new society and people accepting what they became, Johanna felt more comfortable with Hilda being outside again. Especially with Twig since he would protect her with his life and if things got bad, Alfur would go with her as well.

Hilda walked down the street and saw all waves of life around her. Normal people, people with their limbs lost, one guy who lost all of his limbs and had to have his wife push him in a wheelchair, kids with surrogate parents, it’s all there. Hilda even witnessed a person who were basically three people in one body. Literally.

After walking down the block, across the road when it was clear, and then walking far down the block, Hilda found the 7-Eleven store. The outside of it was the typical 7-Eleven structure. Green and red.

Hilda and Twig went inside the store and it was the usual convenient store you would usually see. The only unique part about it is a Slurpee machine that 7-Eleven was known for. There were shelves full of junk food to make someone fat in a few years, carbonated drinks made to dehydrate you despite their high dollar advertising saying otherwise, and everyone’s favorite: Water.

“Hilda!” The same voice as Hilda struck a chord in her mind and the teenager turned to her right to see her own doppelganger standing behind a counter with a cash register in front of her. It was Retail, standing alone in the same sweater as Hilda with a nametag on it that says her actual name.

“Retail!” Hilda excitedly said and ran up to the counter. 

“Why did you come out here?” Retail asked.

“Came by to see you,” Hilda answered and then Retail smiled at the compassion from her younger self. “Well, I’m doing alright. And yeah, I’m closing up shop tonight and I’ll be free for the weekend, like always.”

“Alrighty. So, everything alright here?” Hilda asked. 

“Yeah, barely anybody showed up. So I guess things are fine,” Retail answered.

“That’s good. I guess I’ll be on my way back home. I’ll see you then!” Hilda then began to walk towards the door until Retail called out so Hilda turned back around. 

“Celebrating with Final Destination tonight, Falco?”

Hilda then laughed and then gave a smirky smile to Retail. 

“See you there, Samus,” Hilda finished and she walked out of the store with Twig following. Retail returned the smile. 

“Yeah. Prepare to die.”

* * *

Hilda walked all the way back to the house and when she entered the apartment, she was greeted by both Johanna and Alfur. 

“How’s Retail?” Alfur asked.

“She’s doing great, as usual. I guess I’ll finish up Luigi’s Mansion again,” Hilda said while walking to the bedroom. 

“How about I join you on that?” Alfur asked and climbed out of the couch to follow Hilda. 

“Sure,” Hilda mentioned, and the two ended up in Hilda’s bedroom.

The bedroom looked the same except for the only difference being a TV being propped on the floor near the closet and beside Hilda's bed. It was a mess, but Hilda would try to fix it whenever she'd be able to find a stand or a shelf to place it on. For now, the floor will do.

The GameCube was placed beside the TV and the two games that came with it sat beside the system as well. Always in their cases when they’re not used. 

“So how far have you gotten into your fourth run?” Alfur asked.

“Well, I have gotten to the halfway mark so it’s possible to finish it before Retail shows back up,” Hilda answered, getting the TV and GameCube ready.

“I’m hooked then,” Alfur mentioned and hopped onto the bed with Twig joining him. 

“Hey, Twig,” Alfur added.

“I wonder if we’ll be able to find more games out there. Retail did mention a few. I think Metroid Prime was one of them. She did say I would love that,” Hilda mentioned.

“Depends on ratings,” Alfur answered and then the GameCube was turned on. Soon after, Luigi’s Mansion loaded up and Hilda began playing. The three watched as Hilda went through each room of the mansion as she chatted with Alfur about life.

He’d usually say the same thing Hilda has always heard such as “Things have been great” and such. He even mentioned wanting to get a set of red flannel pajamas and Hilda laughed at the idea, saying that it would be a good idea and he’d look cute in it.

The day simply went on as Hilda went through the game all the way into the night. Even Johanna joined in on the fun when Hilda was in the endgame. Eventually, Hilda finished the game and she realized that the night was born. 

“Told you I’d do it,” Hilda remarked.

“I knew you would,” said Alfur as he laid on the bed.

“And now, we just have to wait for Retail and we’ll all destroy each other on Final Destination.”

“That’s one of the Smash maps, right?” Alfur asked. 

“Yep,” Hilda answered and she then went over to her desk after turning on the ceiling light. 

“I guess I’ll draw some stuff until she gets back.”

Meanwhile, on Retail’s side, nobody really showed up during the night time, which wasn’t a surprise for her. That normally happens often. The store had white lights contrasting the black and yellow nature of the outside which never changed. Got to the point where Retail was bored most of the time and picking apart tiny details in the world.

10 PM came by and it was time to close up shop, so Retail secured everything in the building. The register, the safe, everything. Once she was done making sure everything was secure, Retail turned off the store lights and locked the doors afterward. She found herself on the sidewalk among the darkness and the yellow lights from street lamps.

The woman with blue and pink hair walked towards the direction of Hilda’s house with nobody around. However, before Retail is able to remember how many people showed up, she saw something. It was far away, but it looked like something was attached to one of the street lamps on the far left side of the street. 

So Retail began to speed up her pace to get a closer look at what she saw, running up the street towards Hilda’s house and before Retail knew it, she was looking at a corpse hanging from the street lamp.

Once she realized this, she had no clue what to make of it. The body was hanging from the neck and looked like his guts were pulled out of him. Retail was in horror at what she witnessed where she began to lose herself. Trouble breathing at the gory mess and falling on her side soon after.

When Retail managed to bring herself back to reality, the corpse was still there. It was real and the blood that covered him managed to paint part of the road red. Retail ultimately got up and began running towards Hilda’s house. 

Retail had this sense that this random corpse would get himself down and chase her like if this was a George A. Romero film, but the body didn’t move at all. The corpse still hung there while Retail ran away traumatized.

Eventually, she managed to find her way back into the apartment. Unlocking the front door with a key made just for her thanks to Johanna, Retail ran up the stairs and found herself back in the apartment after unlocking the door there. Johanna obviously noticed Retail entering the house in a panic and asked if she was alright. Of course, Retail said “no” and went for the telephone on the wall near the kitchen, dialing 911.

Johanna questioned why Retail was calling the police at first, but as Retail explained everything to the operator, Johanna realized the gravity of the situation and found herself back on the couch in disbelief.

Once Retail explained everything and gave the location of where she found the body, she hung up the phone and joined Johanna by resting on the couch. 

“How did someone manage to hang themselves like that?”

“They did not kill themselves. It was obvious that someone murdered them,” Retail retorted, “they had their guts pulled out,” Retail added.

“Right,” Johanna responded. “Look. Just let them do their jobs and calm yourself with Hilda, alright?”

“Yeah….sure,” Retail finished and she got up for her new objective, but first, she had to get a drink from the kitchen. There were options in the fridge, but water is what Retail went with. She grabbed a water bottle and started drinking it as she walked to Hilda’s room.

Retail entered Hilda’s room to see that everyone in there was asleep. Alfur, Twig, and Hilda. Alfur was asleep in the bed with Twig and Hilda fell asleep on the desk, using her arms like a makeshift pillow.

The older version of Hilda walked up to the desk, placed the water bottle down, and shook Hilda until she awoke. Hilda lazily raised her head from the desk, looked to her right, and noticed Retail.

Hilda immediately hugged her doppelganger. 

“Welcome home!” Hilda began as she tightened the hug as Retail took notice of a one to one accurate drawing of her and Hilda on the desk. 

“What’s that?”

Hilda looked at the desk and remembered what she did earlier. 

“Oh, this? Yeah. I made this because I was bored,” Hilda answered, picking up the picture and giving it to Retail. The image was simply a full colored drawing of both Hilda and Retail together. It looked pitch perfect to what the two actually look like.

After Retail placed the drawing back on the desk, she hugged Hilda. A way of returning the favor. 

“So, you want to wake up Alfur and then get destroyed in Final Destination?”

“Sure,” Hilda answered and she then got up, walked over to the bed, and woke Alfur up. 

“Ah...hi, Retail,” Alfur spoke as he rejoined the world and the two girls prepared the TV, the GameCube, and the controllers for a session of Melee.

The two picked their fighters, the map, and they went off to battle. During all of this fun, Retail couldn’t get the sight of the corpse out of her head. Why was it there to begin with? Did a group of guys murder someone and hanged them without anybody noticing? Who knows really. All Retail knew is that the cops were going to look into it and that’s all she needed to feel safety from it. She even had Hilda as well. That always brought a cheerful bliss to her.

After many battles and Retail winning each game, everyone was ready for bed. Alfur got up and was ready to sleep elsewhere until Hilda and Retail offered for him to join them. “No. Trust me, I’ll be fine with Johanna.”

“How about one of us shrinks down and you join like months ago?” Retail suggested. 

“No. Come on. You two seem to be fine on your own and that bed can only fit like two people.”

Alfur then looked at the two and they both gave a face of sadness. It was game over for Alfur at that point. It was either this or a broken heart. “Alright. Alright,” Alfur changed his mind. 

"We’ll both have to get into pajamas first because me being like this would be uncomfortable. Without a doubt,” Retail mentioned and she got up, grabbed a pair of pajamas that Johanna got for her sometime back, and went off into the apartment’s bathroom.

After Retail arrived back in both black and red pajamas with her sweater over the shirt, Hilda soon followed the same path Retail took and arrived back in blue and purple pajamas along with her own sweater. The two girls got into the bed first and then Alfur followed after turning the ceiling light off, resting near the edge of the bed while Retail was beside the window and Hilda was in the middle. It was a snuggle party.

Hilda didn’t know who to choose to rest on: her loveable doppelganger or her father. With some thinking, the answer became clear: Alfur was the choice, so Hilda rested her head on Alfur’s chest like how she did months ago while Retail just slept normally. 

The only thing Hilda could hear was Twig’s snuffled snores and Alfur’s heartbeat like before. Before Hilda could get some quality sleep, she couldn’t resist not finishing the day without sharing a bit of compassion. 

“I love you, Dad.”

The night went by without a hitch for everyone except for Retail who was dreaming about not only the corpse she encountered, but memories of the past unlocked themselves because of it. To her, it was a fire. A city in flames and bodies everywhere. Some were unrecognizable and Retail’s memories showed a sight of a figure in the sky. 

All of these memories in Retail’s dream became more painful than anything these people suffered through to the point where Retail woke up in a short panic while covered in her own sweat. Retail did notice red and blue lights coming from the window and when she looked out, she saw a platoon of cops investigating the body from earlier. Yes, it was far away from Retail to see the body again, but the lights would give the indication that something was wrong.

Retail turned around and noticed that both Hilda and Alfur were still asleep. The sight of the two being close managed to calm Retail. Since both Retail and Hilda were the same person from similar worlds with slight differences, seeing Hilda and Alfur together was like a sense of peace.

It was an unfortunate situation when Retail had to wake up Hilda just so she wouldn’t be alone. Hilda awoke to notice Retail breathing anxiously, and also noticed that she was covered in her own sweat from the nightmare. “What’s wrong?”

“Just...just a nightmare,” Retail answered and before she knew it, Hilda scooted over and hugged Retail to comfort her. 

“Thanks,” Retail added as she looked at Alfur sleeping. 

“What was it about?”

Retail didn’t know what to think for a moment to answer Hilda’s question until a very simple answer came to mind in the blink of an eye. “My old life.”

“Oh,” Hilda said as she continued to hug Retail and she then noticed the cop sirens from outside. “What’s going on out there?”

With Retail knowing that lying will only make things worse, she lets out a sigh of disappointment and prepares herself to tell Hilda everything. 

“Ok...while I was walking home, I...I saw a body hanging from a street lamp. I don’t..I don’t want to talk about it,” Retail answered and Hilda’s face turned to blank as she then broke the hug.

Retail didn’t know what else to do other than return the hug and comfort her younger self as well so the two just stayed together for a while in the dark. Eventually breaking up afterward. 

“Alright. I think I’ll go take a shower to get all this off me. Can you wake Alfur in the meantime? I...just...I just need to be with him afterward.”

“Yeah. I understand,” Hilda answered and then Retail climbed out of bed without waking Alfur up and then walked out of the room to take a shower while Hilda took in the information about the hanging body.

At this time, it didn’t matter and it wasn’t any of their concern so Hilda woke Alfur up and told him everything. The elf had the normal response to a situation like that and he gave his daughter a comforting hug. 

“Hey… Retail mentioned wanting to be with you, or something?”

“Well, she is the same person as you. And if her world is the same, then sure,” Alfur answered and then the two laid back down while Retail cleaned herself up. 

“Hopefully Retail will be alright after that.”

“Since she and I are the same person, I guess she’s a tough cookie to break. I hope, anyway,” Hilda answered. 

“Yeah,” Alfur replied and placed his arm under Hilda’s shoulder and brought her close.

Eventually, Retail arrived back in the same clothes from earlier and she got back into bed. Only this time, Retail was in the middle and Hilda was next to the window. For the first time, Retail was able to sleep with Alfur in a way that reminded her of her old home. Her real home.

Alfur welcomed Retail with open arms and she accepted by resting on his chest the same way Hilda alway did. Out of nowhere, Retail felt like she was being hugged from a third party and it was Hilda. 

Hilda joined in on the hugging spree and Retail’s anxiety was all gone by that point. Even if they’re not her biological family, Retail felt like she was with a family of her own. Like if she was back at home like if nothing ever happened- despite this Alfur being over 5ft tall. Everyone managed to go back to sleep and the night went on peacefully. Even with the cops outside, looking at a mangled corpse from the unknown.

The morning sun came by to wake everyone and they all remembered that they all decided to sleep together as their brains reactivated. Retail noticed her water bottle still on the desk since she forgot about it, so she got up, went to the desk, grabbed it, and finished the drink while Hilda took Retail’s place when resting on Alfur.

Everyone eventually got up along with Twig and walked into the living room to see Johanna watching a news report about the corpse Retail found the night prior. The newscaster talked about how there were no leads for the police to start an investigation. No fingerprints, nothing. 

Knowing that the police couldn’t find any traces of who or what did this left Retail sick at her stomach for a moment until Hilda took notice and grabbed Retail’s hand. 

“I got an idea.”

“What is it?” Retail asked. 

“How about we go to Frida and David’s, bring them over, and have a tournament?”

Retail was flattered by the suggestion, but with what she went through last night, the act of compassion and love with friends was needed for sure. 

“Alright. Well, how about Alfur comes with us, too?”

Both Retail and Hilda looked at Alfur, to the elf’s surprise. 

“Sure. I’d love the walk,” Alfur answered. The girls told Johanna about the plan and while she was hesitant at first, as she realized that both Alfur and Twig were going with them, it was alright to go.

Hilda, Retail, Alfur, and Twig all walked out into the streets of Trolberg together to walk in the direction of David’s house first. Retail looked behind her to see if the corpse was still there and it was gone. The blood on the ground was cleaned as well so the police must have called a clean up crew before everyone woke up to go outside.

The people that the crew did walk past did mention the corpse because of the news, but they weren’t there to see it all for themselves compared to Retail’s discovery. The crew walked down the streets of Trolberg for about 40 minutes until they reached David’s house.

Hilda knocked on the door and everyone waited for several moments until David answered the door like how he always did. David still had his anomalized eyes like before which wasn’t a surprise to anyone. Hilda told David about the plan for a Smash Bros tournament, and he agreed to go, so David had to get himself ready for the trip to Frida’s house.

Once David got ready, along with letting the family know where he’ll be, the crew traveled down to Frida’s house while talking about the current events. David had the usual responses to everything like any sane person and everyone else had the same replies to the boy.

The crew managed to find their way to Frida's to explain everything to her in the same way as before, waited for her to get ready and tell her parents, and she soon joined them to walk back to Hilda’s house.

Everyone walked back to the house while they did have their own cheerful banter about how they would destroy each other on The Fountain of Dreams, Mute City, Ice Mountain, or just Final Destination like most players.

Throughout the rest of the day, they all played Melee together in a series of matches where everyone got their shot of winning. A series of endless battles over Nintendo’s legendary locations with a sea of legendary characters, stage hazards, wonderful compositions from many franchises, so on and so on.

The fun of everyone sitting around the TV and playing each battle got to where the day eventually turned to night and everyone was ready to get some rest like before. The games tallied up to Hilda winning five games, Frida winning six, David going for three, Retail with twelve, and even Alfur for about two.

Alfur told Johanna that he’ll be walking with the kids to take them home along with Retail, Hilda, and Twig following along and off they went. The crew traveled through the streets of Trolberg again, but during the nighttime. 

The traveling took about more than an hour and the crew got both Frida and David back home safely with nobody around to harm anyone at all. Now it was just Alfur, Hilda, Retail, and Twig walking back down in the direction of where they came from.

After another hour of walking back, the crew came back to their street block and witnessed something they would have never thought of seeing in their lives: Gory corpses hanging on every single street lamp down the entire street block going from the start of the block to the 7-Eleven.

Everyone was at a loss for words for what they saw. Bodies mangled up into twisted, bloody, sacks with ropes around their necks. Bodies with their guts pulled out past their feet and many bodies without the lower half of their torsos.

For several minutes, everyone was at awe at the bodies at display. How in the hell could someone hang up that many bodies within two hours? Who knows? Who cares?! Retail’s first thought was to just run through the gore fest like before and go home and when her breakdown began as she ran towards the house, everyone soon joined her.

They all ran through what seemed to be a nightmare. A series of gory pools of red along with bits of intestines on the ground, faces of death, and what felt to be a never ending series of bodies as they all ran.

Retail found her way back inside the apartment, but before running up the stairs and running in the living room, she waited for everyone to show up. Once they all entered, she slammed the door shut and locked it, while everyone else ran inside the living room to Johanna’s surprise.

As Retail grabbed the phone to call the police like last time, Alfur explained everything to Johanna and she felt sick at her stomach at what the elf described to her. Retail got on a line with an operator and explained everything.

Soon after, the cops arrived faster than before with what Retail described. This was infinitely worse than the other night and it had to be taken care of right now instead of everyone waking up in the morning to see this when they go to work, or just simply go outside.

The crew went back into Hilda’s room and watched out the windows to see the cop’s reactions and them trying to get the bodies off of the street lamps. The cops looked like they were in the video game version of Dubai when they looked at the corpses. 

Some of the corpses were cut down, but many of them were tied so tightly with so many layers of rope to where they just cut off the hands to not waste any time. It took them about four hours to get the bodies off, but during the two hour phase, everyone in Hilda’s apartment was just comforting each other.

The girls, Alfur, Twig, and even Johanna all just hugged each other for what seemed to be an hour before they were calm again. Sure, the police were still dealing with the bodies, but at least everyone’s composure came back and Johanna decided to get some sleep.

“I don’t think I’ll be having peaceful dreams anymore,” Alfur said. “Me either,” Hilda replied, "why would someone do this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a group of people. We were gone for like, what? Two hours? So they must have got a ton of guys to tie them up to the lamps. Ladders, ropes, and a ton of muscle strength,” Retail answered. However, Retail’s thoughts on who this could be turned to her dream about the figure in the sky. That figure that made her suffer. The one and only, Rilda.

“No, no, no. That’s not her,” Retail said out loud to everyone. “What?” Alfur asked. 

“No. It must have been a few guys who were loons. Rilda wouldn’t do something like this. She’d be worse.”

“Who’s Rilda?” Alfur asked and then Retail looked at him like if she saw the devil. 

“She’s the second Hitler,” Retail answered, “I doubt she would do this, because if she was here already, then she would have killed us by now.”

“Alright...then. Look. Let’s just get some sleep, ok? You two will be alright without me?” Alfur asked the two. 

“No. Dad, no. How about we all sleep together? Let’s just go to Mum’s room and we’re not divided,” Hilda suggested.

Alfur did think of the idea. Johanna’s bed would be big enough for everyone and it would benefit his daughter’s mental health so it would be a win/win situation. 

“Alright. I’ll go ask,” Alfur finished and then he got up and left the room.

“You sure this isn’t Rilda, Retail?” Hilda asked cautiously. 

“I...I don’t know. Maybe. I fucking hope it isn’t her, but I don’t know either.”

Hilda then gave Retail a hug and Retail returned the favor too. “Calm down. Relax. I’m here for you,” Hilda softly said and Retail grew a slight smile as Alfur came back into the room. 

“She said yes. Come on.”

The two girls got up, along with Twig following, and everyone went into Johanna’s bedroom. The bedroom had a dark blue color and it was the usual bedroom you’d normally see. The bed, the desk, the desk lamp, and the window.

Johanna was laying on the far left side of the bed and when everyone joined her in the bed, Alfur was beside Johanna, Hilda was in the middle, and Retail was on the far right while Twig snuggled up with Hilda.

While Hilda did have her attention towards Alfur, she did notice that Retail was having deep panicked breaths so Hilda decided that Alfur was alright by himself. Hilda turned her body towards Retail with Twig climbing over to snuggle up again and she reached over to grab Retail’s right hand, holding it while Hilda tried to sleep. 

Retail did calm herself down and she returned the favor by holding onto Hilda’s hand as if she was being protected, so her anxiety died down and Retail was able to rest. Once the anxiety among the group was out, they all went to sleep together peacefully.


	2. Red

Sunday came and went. Everyone stayed together while the news went insane about the new bodies, but nothing happened on Sunday, aside from the two girls just speedrunning Luigi’s Mansion again.

Monday came along and both Retail and Hilda went their separate ways. Retail went to work at the 7-Eleven and Hilda went to school. The kids in Ahlberg were horrified about what they learned from the news talking about the mangled corpses.

When many asked Hilda if she saw the bodies since they were so close to her house, Hilda was honest and told them everything which made them cringe even more. Some of the bodies were actually parents of a few kids, too, and Hilda felt horrible for those kids.

Everyone had a face of despair and an uneasy feeling of misery around as everyone did their work, ate their meals, and walked through the hallway. Aside from that, school went on like it normally did when it came to structure.

During the bus ride back home, all the kids would talk to themselves about the bodies like always, to where it just became numb for Hilda to hear. Hilda did find herself back at the house to realize that Retail was selected to be closing up shop again, so Hilda just hung out with Alfur for the rest of the day, depressed from all the kids talking about the bodies.

In Retail’s perspective, at the 7-Eleven at night, she was bored and often depressed like Hilda. The store looked like it normally did. Cold, white, and dull. Retail just waited for anyone to show up for what seemed like hours, but nobody did at all…. Until a random body came crashing through the doors and landing on the shelfs to knock them down.

Retail’s senses kicked into overdrive and she ducked behind the counter. What the hell just happened? Why did a random body just break down the doors? Retail didn’t know what to do. Since the counter was close to the door, Retail couldn’t just peek her head over the counter to see who threw the body. She couldn’t leave...unless she shrunk down. So she did, but the name tag on her sweater popped off because it wasn’t woven with Retail’s hair.

Retail’s world was enlarged to her and she noticed the counter’s open drawers with all kinds of stuff in it so she climbed in it to hide away. After getting in, she extended her arm out to grab the now large name tag and she then pulled it into the drawer with her to hide it.

Soon, Retail began to hear footsteps in the store as she hid away. Retail then saw the legs of the person walking as it made it behind the counter. It wore the same colored pants as Retail did, but before she could get a better look, the figure walked away from the counter.

Retail decided to climb out of the drawer and use her arms like a grapple to get to the top of the counter, once she got on top of the counter, she saw the figure walking around near the far right end of the store. Retail’s worst fear became true when she looked at the person. They looked like they wore a grey shirt with black pants along with having red hair as long as both Retail and Hilda’s. Retail knew exactly who it was. It was Rilda.

Retail became horrified at the sight. Rilda looked like her clothes were covered in dry blood, and her face was identical to Retail and Hilda. Retail knew she had to get out of there and tell Hilda. She knew.

So Retail ran to the other side of the counter and rappelled to the ground, running towards the broken door and past all the shattered glass. She had to get out of there. The devil was walking among her now, and the only thing to do was run.

Retail just ran and ran and ran to where she got outside. Once she ran far away to where Rilda wouldn’t notice her, Retail grew back into her normal form and kept running for what felt like miles.

Retail just couldn’t believe it. She had a feeling, but she didn’t know it would happen so soon. That didn’t matter. She just had to get back to the house as soon as possible and tell Hilda and only Hilda this for now.

Eventually, Retail made it back to the house. She ran inside and all she saw was Johanna sitting down on the couch and everyone else was missing. 

“Where’s Hilda?”

“In her bedroom with Alfur. What’s wrong?” Johanna asked. 

“Nothing. Just wondered where she is,” Retail answered, and then walked off into Hilda’s bedroom.

Retail saw Hilda playing Luigi’s Mansion again while Alfur and Twig were asleep in Hilda’s bed. 

“Hey,” Hilda said, and she then got up to hug Retail.

“You alright?” Hilda asked. 

“No. I need to talk to you,” Retail began with a scared face. 

“What’s wrong?”

Retail’s anxiety begins to build and she then buries her face into Hilda’s shoulder. 

“Rilda is here,” Retail spoke and then Hilda broke free from the hug in sudden terror. 

“What?!”

“Ok. Calm down. Don’t wake Alfur up. Alright….another body….it was thrown through the doors and Rilda searched around for me. I shrunk down and got away without her noticing,” Retail explained.

“Why did she do that?” Hilda asked. 

“I have no clue. Rilda just does things, so that might explain the bodies, too. She’s been here for days,” Retail said.

“Then why hasn’t she killed us already?” Hilda asked again. 

“....She wants to toy with us,” Retail answered, sitting on the floor with Hilda joining her. 

“What do we do now?”

“We wait. Honestly, we just wait until she shows up again and try to stop her,” Retail answered. 

“That’s it? We’re just going to sit around and wait?”

“Yes. What do you expect? If you’re thinking about going to the store, Rilda is most likely gone already. She’ll come to us and when she does, we deal with her.”

“What do we tell Alfur and Mum?” Hilda wondered as she got up. 

“Nothing. They’ll just panic and try to get the cops involved and then they’ll get killed. We do nothing.”

Hilda just stood there in silence as Retail rose up to hug her. 

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll stay here tomorrow and keep an eye on everyone. You just go to school, and we then just watch over everyone,” Retail answered while hugging Hilda.

“Alright….. what are you going to do to her if we catch her?” Hilda asked. 

“I’m going to kill her,” Retail mentioned and then Hilda broke from the hug again in disbelief. 

“What? Why?!”

“Because she’s beyond saving. There’s something you need to learn, Hilda. There are people in this world who are unredeemable. They cannot be reasoned with at all. They just want to watch the world burn and if those people aren’t killed then you might as well let them pour gasoline on our bodies.”

“That doesn’t make it any right, either! What happened to Sparrow Scouts law?” Hilda retorted. “.....Sometimes things don’t work out. It’s not as simple as you think, and you will see.”

Hilda didn’t know what to think about that. Hearing that herself, an older version of herself, would resort to direct murder, despite her love for life. Was Rilda as bad as Retail is making her out to be? That’s gotta be impossible. Even in the worst of times, Hilda never resorted to murder. This is just something else for her to comprehend.

“Is she...really that awful?” Hilda asked with a scared look. 

“Yes,” Retail answered to Hilda’s horror. Knowing that they’re going to have to kill someone is just rancid. 

“Don’t think about it too much,” Retail suggested and then Alfur started to wake up.

As Alfur yawned, he noticed both Retail and Hilda. 

“Hi,” Alfur began. 

“Hi, Alfur,” Retail said as she walked over and sat down on the bed next to Alfur. 

“It’s good to see you again,” Alfur said.

“Yeah. Hey Hilda. I’m going to take a shower and then go to sleep. I’m ready to get some rest,” Retail stated and then Hilda nodded her head. 

“I am, too.”

Retail got up from the bed, walked off into the bathroom, and took the shower she said she was going to take. Once she got out and got into pajamas, Retail walked back into the bedroom to see that both Hilda and Alfur were sleeping together while waiting for Retail to join them.

So Retail did that. She just climbed into bed with the two and she rested. Hilda did want to lay on Alfur like she normally does, but she was too worried about Retail so she turned over and hugged her. “It’s alright. I’m fine, really. Rest with Alfur and I’ll join you.”

With Retail saying that she’s alright, Hilda didn’t know what to do at first until she thought to herself that maybe this is the best thing. So she turned back over to Alfur and laid her head on his chest like always. Then Hilda felt she was being hugged from the back and realized Retail joined in. “You need the support more than me.”

“What’s wrong, Retail?” Alfur asked. 

“Bad day,” she answered and Alfur’s doubts were eased. The three, along with Twig, fell asleep together and the night went on peacefully.

* * *

Hilda woke up, got dressed, and she left for school while Retail looked after everyone. Nothing came up while Retail stayed at home. Johanna did ask why Retail stayed and she answered with her feeling miserable due to the bodies. It was terrible to lie to her, but it was to protect her from Rilda.

News did break out once again, but thankfully, Johanna and Alfur never found out, because they never tuned into the news to learn about the disaster. As for Hilda, she learned that police were going to put an ABV out for a red haired woman who destroyed the 7-Eleven due to surveillance footage found and families were starting to get angry, ready to start a riot over the amount of bodies. The hunt had begun.

Hilda rode the bus home like always and the kids asked her the same questions: “You know if this?”, “Is The Boogeyman in town?”, “Hilda, that person looked like you!”

It was tiring. When Hilda got back home, she looked miserable to where Johanna took notice. 

“What’s wrong, sweetie?”

“Bad day,” Hilda answered and she walked into the bedroom to see Retail playing Smash Bros with Alfur to pass the time. It gave the girl a short smile. 

“Well you can tell me what’s going on. It’s about the bodies, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Hilda answered while Retail watched without drawing suspicion. 

“I understand. Hey, you can relax with Retail, or you can join me on the couch,” Johanna offered and Hilda then sat down on the floor beside Retail. 

“Alright then. Love you, honey.”

Johanna then left the room. 

“Welcome back,” Retail mentioned and then Alfur hugged Hilda. 

“Thanks,” Hilda said.

The three played Smash Bros together for most of the day. It was fun going back to Final Destination and fighting everyone. Soon when the day was turning to night, Johanna entered the room with an envelope in her hand. 

“Hey Retail, this is addressed to you. I don’t think we’ve ever gotten mail for you before, but here.”

Johanna handed the letter to Retail and looking at it rubbed her the wrong way. It just said “Remember me?” on it with nothing else at all. Retail’s face just turned serious as she read the words on the front so she immediately went to tear it open in front of everyone. Retail standing alone while everyone stood in front of her. Once she opened it, she took out what looked like seven photos.

Retail looked through each photo and it was obvious what was going on. The first photo was Johanna, the second was Alfur, the third was Twig, fourth was David, fifth was Frida, the sixth and seventh…..Retail’s worst fears were activated when seeing the final two photos. 

“What’s wrong?” Hilda asked.

Retail looked at everyone with dead eyes. 

“Johanna...pack your things and get the fuck out of Trolberg,” Retail ordered to everyone’s surprise. 

“What? What do you mean?”

“I need to explain some things to everyone else,” Retail replied and she then hid all the photos in her back pocket. Everyone except for Hilda started to question why Retail was acting like this, but when she took everyone into the living room and explained everything along with the news of what happened at the 7-Eleven, it all clicked.

Retail just told what was most important: Rilda was here and she was going to destroy everything in sight with mind games that would progressively get worse. The photos that Retail saw ultimately told her that Johanna, Alfur, Twig, Frida, and David were Rilda’s targets and Retail had to get them to safety. When Retail finished explaining everything, everyone’s minds were blank.

Johanna and Alfur didn’t know what to say when Retail explained everything to them, but they understood what needed to be done. 

“What do we do now?” Johanna asked.

“I got an idea: We go and get David and Frida. Then you leave the city while me and Hilda deal with Rilda. It’s to keep you out of the way and safe away from her,” Retail explained. 

“I’m not leaving my daughter behind to a psycho!”

“Johanna, how do you think Hilda and I survived the bus crash? Huh? We went down with the bus because David was too scared to climb out so we shifted, hugged him, and we tumbled across the entire bus when it crashed without so much as breaking a bone at all. Yes, we had cut marks from the glass, but any normal person would be dead if they did something like this. I fought her and if I wasn’t brought here, I could’ve saved everyone and prevented extinction! Why do you think I trained Hilda to use her abilities? Not just to help her, but to be ready for the horrors of this world. If we work together on getting rid of Rilda, I don’t see how we can fail.”

Johanna looked at Retail right in the eyes. 

“Are you sure?”

‘Yes. I am,” Retail answered. 

“Why didn’t you tell us this earlier?” Alfur asked. 

“Because I wanted to wait and see what happens next. Now that I know what she’s going to do because I know her well, it’s time to act. Now…. let’s just go and quit wasting time.”

“I’ll wake up Twig,” Hilda said and walked off into her bedroom to get her silent friend. Johanna looked to the ground like if she was going to break down and Retail did take notice so she walked up to her and hugged her. 

“I’m sorry for this happening. Honestly, if I wasn’t here, maybe your chances would be zero. So be thankful for me.”

Johanna nodded her head and Hilda then walked back into the living room with Twig in her arms. 

“We’re going to go through the alleys so Rilda doesn’t find us easily. If she does, then run for your life while we deal with her,” Retail said.

“Ok….ok,” Johanna said, and she got up along with Alfur. After Hilda got into her normal clothes, such as the sweater, white shirt, and black pants and shoes, everyone was ready. So they all went to the door and walked out. This was the beginning of a nightmare.


	3. Hunted

The city streets were calm like they always were. The sun still had its yellow hue, but most of the day was killed off, so time was of the essence. The people were walking like normal, the cars were driving, and life seemed normal. Too normal.

“Alright. Let’s get Frida first,” Retail said and she began walking into the Trolberg alleys while the others followed. The alleys were dark, black, and dirty. A complete contrast to what the city was about. Trash cans all around, fences to be climbed, stray cats everywhere, it was a mess.

The crew endlessly traveled through alleyways and if they reached a road path that they had to cross to reach Frida’s, they did it quickly and without hesitation. Twig did get worried when seeing the dilapidated nature of the alleyways, but Hilda held the animal to make him feel safe.

It took the crew at most two hours to reach Frida and the day was beginning to die and reform as the night. Retail knocked on the door while also checking over her shoulder in case Rilda was around. Soon after, the door opened to show Frida.

“Hey….” Frida spoke, noticing everyone on the sidewalk, “what’s going on?” she asked, and then Retail replied with “We need to talk.”

Retail walked into the house along with everyone else, noticing the living room where the parents rested on the couch, taking notice of everyone walking in, so they got up to talk. 

“What’s going on here?” Frida’s mother asked calmly and then Retail realized something: If Frida leaves, the parents would have to join them.

So Retail sat the family down on the couch and explained everything to them. Showing them the five photos and telling them that the corpses are connected with all of this. Just like Johanna and Alfur, they couldn’t believe it.

“Now you understand that we have to get you and your daughter out of the city,” Retail said. 

“What if she finds us outside the city?” The father asked.

“Then you’re fucked, but it’s the only way to be sure that you’ll be away until all of this is over,” Retail answered and then Hilda jumped in. 

“What about that house in the forest? You all could go to that and stay in there, but the best idea would be to leave the door open so you can leave.”

“That could work,” Retail replied. “Just wish for the place to be a fortress and maybe you’ll be safe, but if you see a red haired woman, just shut the door. The only way to get out is to wish to be home,” Retail added.

“My god,” Frida’s mother said to herself and facepalmed. 

“Why don’t we just stay at home and hide?” Frida asked.

“Because Rilda is another Hilda,” Retail answered, to everyone’s surprise. 

“It was obvious from the name alone. From what I know about her, she just murders for fun. She can kill you in an instant, but if she wants to torture you then she will enjoy it. You won’t want that, so hiding away from the city is the best bet. We’ll just lift you over the wall and you’re on your own.”

“What about Trolls?” Frida’s father asked. 

“If you run into one, hide or run,” Retail answered. 

“And what are you going to do when Rilda arrives or you find her?” The mother spoke.

“To put it bluntly, I’m going to kill her. If not then we’re all going to be slaughtered one way or another,” Retail answered and the entire room went silent. 

“What….what about the police?” The father asked.

“She’ll kill them and use telekinesis to get the keys to her cell. Simple. There are people in this world who cannot be saved.”

After some silence, Retail broke the empty void of sound again. 

“First, we’re going to get David. Get ready,” Retail finished, and she then walked over to the door to wait. The family then went off to get ready while Hilda joined Retail at the door with Twig in her arms. 

“Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure of it. You want your friends and family safe? It has to be like this. Then when this is all over, we go and get them from the house. Then we can have a nice cone of ice cream and relax.”

“Double scoops?” Hilda sarcastically asked and then Retail chuckled. 

“Double scoops,” Retail replied, and her face turned back to serious. 

“Seriously though, I don’t see any other way for this to work.”

“I know. I trust you,” Hilda said and she then placed her hand on Retail’s arm. Retail took notice and she just hugged Hilda. 

“Yeah.”

Eventually, the two separated and they looked at each other in the eyes. 

“Prepare yourself. In case anything bad happens, just be ready.”

“I will,” Hilda responded. 

“Good,” Retail finished, and she noticed that Frida and her parents were ready. 

“Ready to go?”

Everyone nodded.

“Let’s go,” Retail said, and everyone went out of the house to get David. Everyone went back into the alleyways of the city, but it was darker than before due to the night starting to take over.

Within an hour of the crew going through the alleys to reach David, they suddenly heard rumbling that was followed with a loud explosion. 

“What was that?” Hilda asked and then Twig became scared, hiding in Hilda’s arms while she petted him. 

“It’s ok, boy.”

“I have a feeling I know what happened,” Retail began. 

“What happened?” Alfur asked, and Retail then sighed. 

“Rilda destroyed a building.”

“How do you know?” Frida asked. 

“I know that sound. With my Trolberg being destroyed. It’s just like that,” she answered.

“What do we do know?” Frida’s mother spoke and Retail responded by just continuing to walk forward, but in a fast motion. 

“We need to hurry up.”

The crew kept walking through the dark alleys, thankfully never running into anybody, but they were now walking at a faster pace to get to David before Rilda could. Maybe Rilda now knows about what they’re doing and she destroyed Frida’s house...or even Hilda’s home. The answer isn’t there, but it didn’t matter. Rilda might be hunting the crew now and they had to get to David before she would.

Soon after, the crew finally made it to David’s house. Similar to Frida’s, but only different in the color pallet. Retail ran across the street with everyone following and she began knocking on the door in a hasty motion. 

“David!”

No response.

“David, open the door! We have to talk!” Retail yelled with no answer. So she decided to wait for a few moments until the door finally opened to show David with a pale look. 

“David!” Hilda yelled and hugged the boy while still holding Twig.

“We need to talk,” Retail said and David only nodded. He didn’t say anything. 

“What’s wrong?” Hilda asked and then David separated from the hug to walk into the living room where his parents were at, watching the news and what everyone saw on the station was utmost horrifying.

The news station had the cameraman showing what looked like a cultist gathering with a building destroyed, reported that more than 30 people were killed in the collapse. The building that collapsed wasn’t Hilda’s or Frida’s. It was a random office building, and witnesses said that the building looked like it pulled itself apart from the inside.

The area was a fiery mess, with people helping each other out to get out of the ruble while a red haired woman floated in the air above the disaster. It was Rilda. Soon after, a few cops showed up and had their guns pointed right at Rilda to kill her. Yet to the cops' surprise, their guns were pulled out of their hands out of nowhere and they floated while one of them went to Rilda’s left hand.

The guns turned themselves around to point directly at the heads of the cops and without hesitation, the triggers of all the guns were pulled at once and eight bodies went on the ground with holes in their heads. Suddenly, all the clips in the clip holders were pulled out from each cop corpse and they all went to Rilda. The other guns and the bodies were lifted into the sky and thrown across as far as the eye can see….all the way to the Trolberg Lake.

Rilda looked like she wore the same grey shirt and black pants from the night she destroyed the 7-Eleven, but something was different with her face. Rilda’s eyes were glowing green. 

“Is Rilda...a Marra….?” Frida asked. 

“Yes. Yes, she is,” Retail answered as she watched the broadcast with everyone.

Rilda then suddenly landed on top of the rubble and she roared out for the crowd’s attention. 

“Listen to me carefully and clearly. I’m sure you know of two blue haired women by the name of Hilda. If you do then you already know what to do: Kill them.”

Suddenly, Rilda places her free hand into her back pocket, grabs two photos that are possibly images of Retail and Hilda, and then throws it into the crowd. In the audio of the footage, one man said 

“What if we don’t?”

Rilda took notice of the crowd and stared at the man to what the crew envisioned on the TV, but then Rilda flew down, grabbed somebody, and then went back on the rubble with what looked to be a child in her hands. Without hesitation, Rilda placed the barrel of the gun on the child’s skull and pulled the trigger, killing him instantly.

The crew watching the broadcast had their jaws on the floor except for Retail. She knew that Rilda would do something like this, so it didn’t shock her at all. The broadcast went on to show the father yelling and climbing up the rubble only to be stopped by Rilda. 

Rilda used telekinesis to hold the man off of his feet while he tried to grab Rilda with his hands, but then Rilda pulled out what seemed to be a knife and jabbed it into the man’s gut to pull it across and rip out the man’s intestines afterward in front of everyone. Soon after, the body of the father became lifeless and Rilda dropped the corpse.

“Kill them or your children will scream.”

Right as Rilda said those words, the broadcast cut off and it went back to the newsroom with the hosts talking about what just happened. Johanna just got up and turned off the TV while nearly everyone else didn’t know what to do. Johanna just walked to Hilda and hugged her tightly while shaking.

While hugging Hilda, she looked over to Retail. 

“Does Hilda really have to be here for this?” Johanna asked.

“Yes. I will do everything in my power to keep her alive,” Retail answered and she then looked over to David. 

“We’re here to get you out of the city. Get ready,” Retail finished.

Right away, David and his parents prepared themselves for the trip outside the city and Retail explained why they had to get out as well, since David is targeted to be murdered. The family wanted to leave the city even more so David just grabbed his teddy bear with the name “Warren” while the parents just packed up two suitcases of clothes.

When the crew finally got back outside to now reach the city wall, the crew expanded to 10 people and it would be troublesome trying to get eight people out of the city at once, while the entire city population were ready to kill Hilda and Retail.

Without a doubt, they used the alleyways and were as careful as possible with the entire city hunting them. A few times, they had to hide away behind walls as mobs with guns, knives, farm equipment, molotovs, and even pencils.

As the mob left, the crew snuck over to another alleyway towards the city gates and they repeated this for three hours. Eventually, they finally made it to the city wall and all the girls had to do was grapple up with the families and put them on the other side.

“Alright. We’re here. Now… we’re going to get the kids out of here first, so Frida and David are first,” Retail ordered, and then Frida went over to hang on to Retail while David hung onto Hilda after she gave Twig to Johanna. The two then extended their arms to the top of the city wall and they rappelled up the wall and then rappelled down the otherside, placing both Frida and David down.

Right before the two went back up, David grabbed Hilda’s hand and she took notice. 

“Hey….um….thank you...for saving me.”

Hilda took the words into thought and smiled. A glimmer of hope in a dark time so Hilda hugged the teenager. 

“You’re welcome,” Hilda said, as she hugged David before Retail grunted to get her attention. 

“Come on. We gotta go.”

The two separated and the girls went back to the other side, Retail carrying Frida’s parents and Hilda carrying David’s parents up. They were heavy, but it had to be done.

Once the parents were on the other side, it was time to bring Johanna and Twig over. The girls went back over the wall again and Retail held Johanna while Hilda held Twig and Alfur. The four went over the wall and met up with everyone else.

Hilda just couldn’t leave her mother, father, and deerfox behind without saying anything so she gave Johanna and Alfur a tight hug. 

“For the love of God, please be careful,” Johanna ordered. 

“Johanna, I promise I will keep her safe. Even if I have to give myself up,” Retail said as the three separated. Then Twig jumped into Hilda’s arms again with a short whine.

“I’m sorry, Twig,” Hilda said while hugging the animal, “I love you too,” she added, and she then looked Twig right in the eyes. 

“Take care of Mum while I’m gone.”

Twig nodded and he was then placed on the ground to join Johanna. But before Hilda could go back with Retail, Alfur ran up to her and hugged her tightly. 

“I’ll miss you so much, sweetie,” Alfur said. 

“I know…”  
“You remember when I was hurt and you just...helped me adjust to life? And with me finally having the strength to be truthful?” Alfur began to tear up.

“Yes, I do,” Hilda said. 

“Come on, Hilda. Let’s go,” Retail suggested, offering a hand to take Hilda up the wall. 

“I love you, Dad,” Hilda said and she began to tear up, placing her head on Alfur’s shoulder.

“I love you too, sweetie….. I don’t want to let you go.”

As Alfur said this, Retail walked up and softly grabbed Hilda by the shoulder and tugged her to let Alfur go. So she did and all she saw was her father with tears on his face.

Hilda slowly backed away from her loving friends and family as they watched her. Hilda took Retail’s hand and they both began ascending up the wall for the last time, while Hilda looked at Johanna, Alfur, and Twig.

Once the two went over the wall, the mother and the deerfox were out of Hilda’s sight. The two made it back down to ground level, but Hilda didn’t want to move. She just placed her back against the wall and slid down until she was sitting on the grass.

“Why can’t we just go with them?” Hilda asked. 

“You know why we can’t do that. If I had a choice, I’d let you.”

“Just let me go with them. This isn’t my fight. It’s yours,” Hilda said and then Retail walked back, kneeling down and staring at Hilda’s face. 

“You walking away from this puts me at a disadvantage. Sure, I could take her down, but what if I can’t? What if she kills me or injures me and nobody will be there to help me? I trained you for this very reason. To be ready for Rilda and to learn about yourself to prevent the tragedies I could have stopped if I learned my abilities in time. If I get killed while you sit in that house in the forest, the world will burn. I’ve seen it with my very eyes and it is Hell incarnate. Do you want that, Hilda?”

Hilda softly shook her head and Retail pulled up her sleeve to wipe away Hilda’s tears. 

“Good. If we win, you will be with Alfur and Johanna again. Your life will be back to normal, and yes, we’re getting ice cream.”

Hilda began to chuckle at that ending comment, while also trying to keep her emotions in check. 

“Come here. I’m sorry, that was fucking stupid of me to say,” Retail finished and she then hugged Hilda, placing her head on her shoulder while being buried in sweater cloth. While Retail hugged Hilda, the young one began to let her emotions out by sobbing.

Retail felt sorry for the young version of herself where her face turned depressed as Hilda sobbed into the sweater. Hilda just sobbed and sobbed for what seemed like forever until she finally stopped and lifted her head. 

“You ready to go?”

The teenage girl softly nodded and Retail helped her up. Then the two began walking together. 

“What do we do now?” Hilda asked.

“It’s a very simple thing, Shiftie: We’re going to hunt Rilda and we’re going to kill her,” Retail answered and the two walked back into the city alleyways in search for Rilda. The night had taken over, making the alleyways too dark to navigate when street lamps aren't around to light the path.

So the girls had to sometimes walk in the streets because of how dark everything was around them, avoiding people by going into the pitch black alleyways to hide. After avoiding those people, the two got back onto the street along with placing their hood over their heads.

“How are we going to find her?” Hilda asked while walking. 

“I remember where the sound of the collapse came from. It’s near the lake, I believe.”

“Why did she do that? Like why did she kill that kid and destroy the building?” Hilda asked again. 

“Rilda just does things. Whatever she’s in the mood for, she’ll do it without a care in the world. That’s why. No rhyme, no reason, some people just want to watch the world burn.”

“Oh,” Hilda said to herself and looked slightly down with Retail taking notice. In response, Retail pulled Hilda close and hugged her. 

“Yeah. Once we get down there, we can start. Or we can grab someone there and force them to tell us where Rilda went to. North, West, East, South, whatever. Then we kick her ass and throw her out of her own party.”

“Sounds like a good start,” Hilda finished. 

“Yeah,” Retail replied and as she said that, Retail saw seven people and she looked to her left and saw a dark alleyway. 

“Get inside! Now!”

Retail and Hilda walked into the alleyway together and waited for the people to walk by like always. The two cowered away in the darkness as the people walked by, but what Retail didn’t take into account is the group had flashlights along with guns as well.

Three of the group shined the lights down the alleyway and then both girls were discovered. 

“It’s them! Kill them!”

Four of the group pointed guns at the two, ready to strike. 

“NO, STOP!” Hilda yelled out, placing herself in front of Retail and she was suddenly shot in the face once and the chest several times which resulted with her falling to the ground. As they shot Hilda, Retail was shot in the body multiple times and she fell on the ground beside Hilda.

The two girls laid on the hard ground without even twitching at all to the sight of the crew of seven. 

“Are they dead?” One member asked.

“Fucking obviously,” another member answered as the crew walked up to the bodies. 

“Alright. Let’s carry the bodies back to the building and wait.”

“I remember those two. I feel horrible,” a female member stated. 

“I do too. Come on, get the bodies.”

When one member grabbed Retail by the left elbow, her arm suddenly sprang back to life to grab the guy’s hand that carried the flashlight and twist it until the bones snapped into pieces as the flashlight fell on the ground and broke. Retail used her right arm to punch out the other member’s flashlight and the entire alleyway went dark except for the sight of silhouettes from the contrast by the yellow hue on the street.

Everyone shot their guns all around the place as what seemed to be a stretchy figure moved all over the place in the dark throwing strong punches, breaking people’s arms, throwing them into brick walls, making them crash into each other due to the lack of light along with the members accidentally shooting themselves, and chaos until everything went silent as only one person stood.

Retail looked around to see the outlines of bodies laying all around her and she then remembered Hilda, so she went over to where she originally laid and searched for Hilda. 

“Hilda?”

Retail only heard a mumble and that was what all she needed to locate Hilda. Retail felt the soft cotton of Hilda’s red and grey sweater so Retail grabbed Hilda and carried her out into the light away from the alley.

“How am I not dead?” Hilda asked herself, and she softly repeated that while she tightly hugged Retail, showing to Retail that Hilda is in slight shock from what happened. 

“Hilda, I need to see your face,” Retail suggested and then Hilda allowed Retail to see that the bullet that landed in Hilda’s head was only lodged into her outer skin layer.

Retail grabbed the bullet with her two fingers and ripped it out of Hilda’s head. As a result, the small dent that it left behind slowly reformed back to normal. 

“How am I not dead?”

“To put it like this: Your body is like rubber, and such so when you get shot….. think of it like a bulletproof vest, except it’s your entire body. Got it?”

Hilda nodded her head and she separated from Retail to look at their sweaters to see holes in them. Retail remembered that she was also shot in the body, too, so she softly placed Hilda on the ground and scraped her body clear of any bullets lodged into her outer skin, resulting in bullets falling out of her clothes and onto the ground. Retail did the same with Hilda.

Retail did take the holes of the sweater into account so she comforted Hilda with a soft hug. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, “it was my birthday gift and now it’s ruined.”

“No, it’s not. Johanna can find ways to patch it up. Remember when she sewed up the white spots on mine with the correct color?”

“Yeah,” Hilda said. 

“We can do it again, even with small holes. It’s alright,” Retail answered and tightened the hug.

“So I can’t die?”

“No. You can. If you couldn’t then we wouldn’t have had Raven Leader pick out glass pieces from our bloody bodies once. Keep this in mind: Sharp stuff equals bad. Bullets and such? No big deal.”

“Alright,” Hilda finished and then Hilda saw a small group of people entering the alleyway because of black outlines in the shape of people coming from the otherside. 

“We need to go.”

Retail turned around and saw the outline of people as well. So Retail placed Hilda’s arm over her shoulder and began walking away at a fast pace. 

“Yeah, we do.”

“HEY! THERE THEY ARE!” One female voice yelled out as the girls began walking down the street and then as the two were walking, they heard gunshots. Most likely to draw others towards them and it worked. When Retail walked down the street with a stressed Hilda, she saw what seemed to be a mob running out from every alleyway on the block to see the two girls. They had to get out of there fast.

“Where do I go? Dammit,” Retail said to herself and she looked up to see the rooftops. The mob can’t get up there fast and the girls could get away without error. Retail extended her left arm to grab the edge of the left building’s rooftop and before the mob could grab her or Hilda, they rappelled up the wall and made it up the roof together. 

“What the fuck?” A few people yelled out. 

“How can they do that?”

Once Retail’s arm was back to normal while hanging onto the edge with Hilda in her other arm, she lifted Hilda up on the roof and Hilda pulled Retail up weakly. 

“Come on! Lift me up to the fire escape over here and we’ll jump!” A male voice from below spoke.

The two on the roof just sat down for a moment while Hilda tightly hugged Retail.

“I don’t want to let go,” Hilda said and all Retail could do is just hug her. Despite the love and comfort, the two had to get out of there. The people from below were boosting each other up to the other building’s fire escape and there wasn’t much time to waste. Retail also noticed that Hilda’s left arm lost control and fell to the ground while stretched out.

Retail had to calm her. Hilda needed love and care so Retail remembered a short lullaby that would help the young version of herself:

" _ Hold me close and hold me fast, this magic spell you cast, this is la vie en rose. When you kiss me, heaven sighs, and though I close my eyes, I see la vie en rose. When you press me to your heart, I’m in a world apart, a world where roses bloom. And when you speak, angels sing from above, everyday words seem to turn into love songs. Give your heart and soul to me, And life will always be la vie en rose." _

After Retail softly sang the lullaby, Hilda’s composure regained itself and she managed to regain control of her body again to hug Retail. Eventually, Hilda separated from Retail to look at her in the eyes.

“Thank you.”

“Ready to go? We can’t stay for long,” Retail asked and Hilda nodded. The two got up and they saw a series of rooftops all around them. The two did see smoke coming from an area near the Trolberg Lake. It was the collapsed building.

The two prepared to run and jump to the other rooftop that was in the direction of the smoke. They ran to the edge, jumped, and made it to the other side with no issues. The other rooftop had an antenna on it, which reminded Hilda of the trick Retail taught her about momentum, so she copied Retail’s trick when she jumped off the second rooftop: Grab the antenna and pull yourself right after you jump to make the forward momentum faster.

The two just kept running and jumping together with Retail checking in on Hilda if she’s still able to move, and she was good enough. However, when Hilda made her jump on another rooftop after Retail, Hilda was then kicked in the face out of nowhere from what felt like a tank shell.

Retail turned around to see Hilda laying on the stone ground of the roof and she saw a figure of nightmares floating above the ground near Hilda. It was Rilda. 

“Hi, honey.”

“Hi….bitch,” Retail said. 

“Gunshots rang, I followed, found you, and you called me a bitch. Perfecto. Sounds about right.”

Rilda looked to see the young Hilda slowly getting up to see the glowing green eyes of Retail’s nemesis. 

“Ah. So you’re the Hilda of this world.”

“Yeah. I am,” Hilda answered, side stepping to stand beside Retail. 

“So, two Hildas for me to kill. Sounds like a Christmas party. Let’s get started.”

Rilda flew towards the two girls and Retail reacted by extending her left arm to force a punch, yet Rilda dodged it and slammed her fist into Retail’s face which sent her to the edge of the rooftop in a short stumble.

Hilda joined in on the battle with using extended arms to fight Rilda, but with Hilda being slow, Rilda dodged each attempt and on the final attempt, Rilda grabbed Hilda’s left arm, pulled her close while also equipping her gun by holding the barrel of it, and then forced the bottom end of the gun into Hilda’s face like if Rilda was using a hammer.

Hilda was sent to the ground afterwards, but Rilda’s surprise, she was grabbed by Retail from the foot and pulled her down to the ground.

As Rilda was being pulled, she placed her gun in the correct position within her hand and began shooting Retail in the arm and all over the body to no success at all to her surprise.

Retail simply threw a punch into Rilda’s face and placed her hands around her neck afterward. However, Rilda began floating in the air with Retail holding on so Rilda headbutted Retail to throw her off her guard.

Once Retail was on the ground, Rilda noticed that the gun she had was empty, so she reloaded it and when she pointed the weapon at Retail, Hilda grabbed Rilda’s gun hand and pulled it down as it fired.

Hilda grabbed the other arm and managed to pull Rilda down to the ground with all of her strength, yet Rilda had a trick up her sleeve. She used telekinesis to hold Hilda up and attempted to pull Hilda’s hands away from her arms, but Hilda didn’t let go at all.

Retail joined in and grabbed Rilda’s legs, to her surprise, pulling her to make her fall on her back, which freed Hilda from the telekinetic influence, and then the two proceeded to pile up against Rilda, sending punches her way until Rilda fired what felt like an endless sea of bullets into Hilda and Retail’s bodies, going from left to right with each shot.

The two were sent back with each shot and when the gun was empty of any bullets, Rilda got up and reloaded the gun at the same time, placed the gun in her back pocket, and began fighting both Hilda and Retail at once, due to them being up close. Plus, fighting them with her fists would make a world of fun.

Retail and Hilda tried to throw punches, but Rilda dodged most of them and threw her own punches. The battlefield was a series of hits among the three. Of course, two versus one does not end well for the one standing alone without pitch perfect tactics, and the two Hildas got the upper hand with them dodging Rilda’s attacks and attacking her at once.

As Retail was fighting Rilda, she noticed the gun in Rilda’s back pocket, so Retail extended her left arm and grabbed the pistol to use against Rilda. Despite Retail having the advantage, she was never trained on how to use a gun in her life so when she aimed the weapon at Rilda hoping to target her head, her lousy aim instead managed to target Rilda’s upper right arm and the bullet went through the arm right after Retail pulled the trigger.

Rilda was in agony from the shot going through her right arm, so to prevent any more shots going off, she used the telekinesis to rip the gun out of Retail’s hand and back into her own where it belonged. Retail took notice, so she ran towards Rilda, only for Rilda to sharply ascend in the air above her and drop down onto Retail with such force that it sent Retail lying on her back, along with Rilda kneeling on top of her.

Hilda reacted by attempting to take the gun away from Rilda with her extended left arm, but Rilda deflected it and began shooting at Hilda until Retail grabbed Rilda’s right hand. Retail began trying to take the weapon away from Rilda along with punching Rilda in the face at times, yet despite the determination, Rilda succeeded by gaining control of her right hand and began slamming the back end of the gun into Retail’s face.

With Retail in trouble, Hilda came back to save her by kicking Rilda in the face, which sent Rilda off of Retail and onto the ground. Hilda didn’t hesitate with her attacks against Rilda. She just sent her punches all over Rilda’s body while dodging any attempts, until Rilda placed her foot under Hilda’s chest and kicked her off to where she landed near Retail to see that Retail’s head was bruised along with her slowly recovering.

She didn’t know what to think. Hilda’s older, stronger, and wise companion slowly recovering…..make her look less than what she was to Hilda. But before Hilda could think, she was kicked in the face by Rilda and sent to the ground again. Rilda got on top of Hilda, placed her knees on top of Hilda’s arms, grabbed Hilda’s neck with her right hand after placing the gun in the back pocket again, and pulled out her knife with her left hand.

Rilda was ready to kill. Rip out the life of innocence like what she always did, until she felt the motion of something grabbing the gun from the back pocket and Rilda looked to see Retail making what seemed to be a heist getaway with an extended arm, but failed when Rilda grabbed Retail’s extended left arm and jabbed her knife straight into the middle of it that made Retail roar out in pain.

Rilda got up and then kicked Hilda in the face multiple times to send her out, ripping the knife out of Retail’s arm afterward, and letting her arm go back to normal while bleeding on her sweater.

Despite the circumstances, Retail wasn’t going to give up that easily. She was going to take this fight to her grave if she had to. 

“Now I know another way to fucking break you,” Rilda said. Retail readied her fists, even with the pain in her left arm, Rilda readied herself with the knife, and the two began to fight.

Rilda began a series of slashes that Retail dodged, along with trying to get the knife out of Rilda’s hand. Retail grabbed Rilda’s left arm by extending her right, but Rilda pulled Retail close. Losing her guard when she was pulled, Rilda got up close and personal with Retail along with managing to stab her in the right shoulder. Lodging the knife all the way in.

In response, Retail headbutted Rilda which made her let go of the knife and back up. Retail grabbed the knife in her right shoulder with her left hand, ripping it out and then placing it in her right hand, due to her left arm being too weak at this point.

To Retail’s surprise, Hilda got back up, slowly, and joined Retail. Hilda looked tired, beaten, and bruised. Even if the two were still kicking, Rilda smiled and took out her gun. She aimed the pistol at the stab mark in Retail’s left arm and shot it, causing Retail to fall onto the ground in pain, grabbing her arm after dropping the knife, and then Hilda picked it back up right as Rilda started to shoot Hilda until she ran out of bullets in the clip.

Hilda backed up with each shot lodging into her skin, and she eventually reached the edge of the roof. She nearly fell off until she managed to balance herself upright. To Hilda’s amazement, Rilda’s telekinesis ripped the knife out of Hilda’s hand, and then Rilda used that power to jab the knife into Hilda’s left shoulder. Hilda screamed as her shoulder was bleeding.

While Hilda was dealing with her injury, Rilda ran up to Hilda and kicked her off the roof, making her hit her back on the wall of the next building, hitting her head on the wall of the building she fell off of, and then landing on the concrete ground with her head hitting the ground, which sent her out cold.

“HILDA!” Retail screamed and she tried to crawl to the edge of the building only to be stopped by Rilda. She struggled, but Rilda slowly jammed her fingers into Retail’s stab wound and caused her to scream and bleed even more than ever.

Then Rilda trapped Retail’s arms with her knees. 

“You know what? You’ve been such a fucking cunt, even in a world that’s not yours, so I got a better idea for both of you.”

Rilda pulled out her gun, placed the barrel in her hands with the back end sticking out on the front, and she then proceeded to slam the gun’s back into Retail’s face. Sometimes, the handle of the weapon would scratch Retail’s face, along with creating bruises on her face and eventually after 13 hits, Retail finally went out cold.


	4. The Three Hildas

Darkness and the feeling of being burned alive. That’s all Hilda could sense when she awoke and she soon realized that her hands and feet were tied, along with her back feeling the side of a wall. She also felt the presence of another body right beside her, but she couldn’t see who it was due to the place being so dark.

Hilda decided that the best idea is to move her body to hit the body beside her to see if they wake up. If not, then the body is a corpse. Thankfully after a few slams, Hilda heard a few panicked breaths and she recognized it as Retail. 

“Retail!”

Retail noticed Hilda’s soft voice and as she took in her “surroundings,” along with her body feeling even worse than ever. 

“Agh!”

With Retail’s yell of pain, Hilda placed her head on what felt to be Retail’s left shoulder. 

“Retail, what happened?!”

“You fell off the building and banged your head on the concrete,” Retail answered in a tired voice.

“You ok?”

“No,” Retail said and then grunted in pain. 

“I can’t move! I can’t hug you. I can’t do anything.”

“I know. Just calm down.” Right after Retail said that, the entire room lit up to an unfinished room that looked like it was part of a construction site. There was a table filled with tools, knives, hammers, nail guns, med kits, and pliers. Beside Hilda and Retail were two polls: One holding a blood bag that connected to Hilda’s left arm vein while the other was the same for Retail. It looked like their left sleeves were pulled back so the needle wouldn’t get grabbed by the sweater.

Hilda looked around and noticed that her sweater was riddled with bullet holes and the right shoulder was covered in dry blood. Same situation with Retail with the addition of her left arm being stabbed. Hilda also noticed that Retail’s stab wound in her left arm was stitched. 

“Retail. Your arm.”

Retail looked up towards her left arm and also noticed the stitching.

“I see that,” she said and looked back down. Retail looked like hell. Her face was bruised with small bloody marks on the left side of her face. When Retail looked over to see Hilda, she looked like she wanted to give up.

“You alright?”

“Better than earlier, but I’m alive,” Hilda answered. 

“You won’t be alive by the end of this,” a voice in the dark spoke and the two women hear footsteps along with seeing Rilda herself, revealed by walking from the dark and into the light of the room.

Rilda looked a bit different this time, sporting a gauze wrap around her right arm with dry blood in it.

“How’s the arm, bitch?” Retail asked. 

“Very funny. Ha, ha. Yes, that was a fake laugh, you cunt. Now, let’s not waste any time and get down to the gory bits.”

Rilda walks up to both Retail and Hilda, standing near, but not close enough for them to try anything. 

“You remember what it’s like to be trapped?” Rilda said to Retail.

“What do you mean?” Hilda asked. 

“Oh...you never told her?” Rilda asked with a surprised face. 

“Why the fuck should I?” Retail said.

“Because you’re going to experience that again, so I might as well fill this Hilda in on the matter,” Rilda answered and she ended up pulling out two photos from her back pocket. Two photos that Retail thought she still had in her back pocket, but Rilda must have searched both girls when they were out.

Rilda showed the two photos to Hilda and she realized why Retail hid the photos from her: The photos were gory images of corpses and the bodies in the two photos were Retail’s version of Johanna, Alfur, and Twig.

They were nearly unrecognizable due to the amount of blood that covered them and part of their internal organs exposed, like parts of Johanna’s brain. It was horrible for Hilda to see and she had no clue how to react other than scream after looking at the photos.

She just screamed as loud as she could while shaking around, trying to get out of her rope bindings and leave while also crying. 

“I’m surprised you kept these works of art on you.”

“I HAD NO PLACE ELSE TO HIDE THEM, YOU FUCKING CUNT!” Retail roared out.

“Ah. Now that makes sense. But still. It doesn’t change what I’m going to do to this little Hilda over here.”

“Why are you like this?!” Hilda screamed and Rilda became surprised. 

“Somebody’s interested in a story. I got a good one to tell: I was like you, but with red hair. But there’s the differences: My “friends,” “family,” and all…. were pricks. Treated me like trash and thought I was nothing. That mother you love so much always loved to blame me for everything so I got the harm. Then I found the Marra. Great group, until they refused to teach me anything and fucked me over so I stalked around, learning their methods until I was a Marra myself. I stalked kids and after feeding off of their terror, I went back to prove myself. To be worthy in the ranks and I’d have some friends for once, but then they began laughing at me. They found it less funny when I ripped them into pieces and fed their organs to whatever was lurking nearby. And then I fed off of their fear and I became like a god,” Rilda explained to Hilda’s horror.

“One night, when Johanna was hurting me, I went into the kitchen and grabbed a chef’s knife, and I’m sure you know the rest. I did the same thing again, and again, and again to everyone else until there was nobody left to play with… until a white light showed up. And I was then able to travel across dimensions to do it all over again.”

“The Anomaly…” Hilda said to herself. 

“Then I went around all the worlds I traveled to and destroyed them in fun ways! Such as nuking every nuclear power plant in the world so radiation will burn the world alive, removed Earth’s atmosphere by destroying the ozone layer with increased pollution so the sun will burn off flesh, fires all over the world, you name it. When the worlds end or before they end, I leave so I don’t get affected. Shame that I wouldn’t get to see the aftermath sometimes, but that happens,” Rilda explained and she then looked at Retail.

“Then I met you. You were the first that was able to put up a fight. All the other Hildas I dealt with I had the pleasure of slaughtering, but you kept challenging me and we were fighting. I got the upper hand in a hardware store with a rail gun and ended up nailing you to the wall. I left you there and I brought your family there. Killing them and having you helplessly watch was one of the greatest days of my life. I’m sure those scars on your body and arms look great, too. So, since I thought you were going to bleed out, I left you for dead and went on my business burning the world, until you came back to try to kill me…. and then that white light came again, and I noticed that you were gone.”

The room became silent for a moment. 

“I went around dimensions to find you and it turns out that you showed up with a Hilda that’s identical to you. What a fucking coinsidence.”

“But why are you doing this?” Hilda asked softly. 

“Humanity is a disease….and I’m the cure. They’re fucking rats that will feed off of worlds until it’s all gone, so I burn it all down with them. If they want to destroy the world, then I’ll show them how it feels to rip the life out of the world. Along with their skin melting off. I destroy them, yes, but it was fucked to begin with. Pollution, overuse of resources, useless governments that pretend they’re helping when they’re really funding their own agendas and destroying lives of people who want to do good, along with the Earth due to their endless warfare. Then they turn those people into drones. Not only that, there’s also money. Money is your blood in this world. Without it, you're as good as dead and a nobody to anyone. People treat each other like garbage only to fulfill their selfish needs as well. Humans are parasites that will feed off of everything and everyone until there is nothing left. The only way to get rid of that is with me…. murdering everyone and ending life’s horrendous cycle. Once and for all.”

“And what will you do when you’re done? Nobody left at all?” Hilda hypnotically asked. 

“If there’s nobody left to find, I consider my work done, and I kill myself,” Rilda answered.

The room went silent again. “Now….let’s quit wasting time here. So, Tall Cunt, where’s the little one’s family?”

Retail didn’t say anything.

“Where the fuck are they?” Rilda angrily asked with no response again.

Rilda walked away from the two and she made it to the table with tools, grabbing a set of pliers, and she walked back to Retail. 

“Let’s see how silent you’ll be after I rip out your molars.”

Rilda grabbed Retail’s lower jaw with her left hand, trying to open her mouth until she finally did it. When Rilda was preparing to place the pliers on one of Retail’s teeth on the right side, Retail moved her head down, which got Rilda’s left hand in Retail’s mouth, so Retail began biting down on Rilda’s middle finger.

Retail sank her teeth into Rilda’s finger so much that it started bleeding as Rilda screamed. Eventually, Retail managed to bite off half of the finger which separated the two, and Rilda responded by punching Retail in the face after she spit out the finger.

To Retail’s joy, Rilda stumbled onto the floor while holding her bloody left hand, and she tumbled to the table, grabbing a med kit and opening it to grab gauze and hydrogen peroxide while turned around, focusing her attention to herself rather than the two women tied up. She poured the peroxide on her bloody middle finger and then painfully wrapped her finger with the gauze to stop the bleeding.

While Rilda patched herself up, Retail was smiling at the sight she was seeing, despite the blood on her face and mouth. Watching Rilda in pain was as enjoyable as watching a well written comedy to Retail.

With Rilda turned around, tending to her wounds, Retail found the perfect opportunity to escape. She began to shrink her feet down enough to get out of the bindings, and her feet were then free. Then she shrunk her hands to fall out of the rope bindings, Retail finally got free and she immediately ordered Hilda to stay silent without saying a single word as she began untying Hilda’s feet bindings after ripping out the needle in her left arm and Hilda’s.

Once Hilda’s feet bindings were untied, Retail moved on to the hand bindings while Hilda noticed something about Rilda. The red haired woman became calm again and she reached over for a knife with her right hand so Hilda tapped Retail’s leg with her own so she would know of the problem.

Retail took notice, but it was too late. Rilda turned around and charged towards the two with a large chef’s knife. Retail stopped untying Hilda and she grabbed Rilda’s right hand, but Rilda began punching Retail’s right shoulder, which caused her to scream in agony and lose her grip on Rilda.

So Retail kicked Rilda away and then Retail charged at her again with the knife, ready to stab her in the face until Retail grabbed the blade itself with both of her hands, stopping it from killing her. To Hilda’s surprise, Retail kept holding the blade despite her hands now bleeding. Then Rilda started kneeing Retail in the ribs. Hilda had to do something, she had to help, so she began remembering how to do size shifting. Just relax and think.

Then Hilda’s hands began to shrink down to get out of the bindings and eventually, to Rilda’s surprise, she was free, and Rilda realized how the two got out.

Hilda immediately ran to Rilda and tackled her to the ground, making the knife’s blade leave Retail’s hands which left her hands stinging as blood covered them.

Rilda tried to stab Hilda, but Hilda pinned down Rilda’s right hand and began a series of hard hits against Rilda’s face until Rilda placed her foot under Hilda’s chest and kicked her off right as Retail joined in on the “fun.”

Retail tried to take the knife from Rilda, but failed when Rilda floated up and forced Retail off of her with a kick. She saw Hilda trying to figure out how to use the nail gun. So, Rilda used telekinesis to rip the nail gun out of Hilda’s hand and bring it to her own as she moved the knife into her left hand.

Once Rilda got the nail gun, she turned it on and shot Retail in the left shoulder with three nails. Hilda extended her left arm and grabbed Rilda’s right arm to stop her from harming Retail any more, but then resulted in Rilda trapping Hilda’s arm by placing it in between her arm and her chest, and then Rilda proceeded to shoot five nails into Hilda’s lower left arm.

Hilda roared in agony as Retail joined in to save Hilda by kicking Rilda, stopping her from harming the young Hilda, and then the two women began running away as Retail grabbed a med kit from the table while dodging firing nails. 

“RUN!” Retail yelled while running into the darkness of the construction site.

The area around Hilda was filled with darkness. She couldn’t see anything like before. Only hearing the sounds of footsteps, someone crashing into wooden objects, and the sounds of a nail gun going off. Hilda just ran through the site without knowing where to go. 

“RETAIL!”

“HILDA, RUN!” Hilda heard the screams of Retail from far behind, but Hilda kept running through the dark and eventually, she lost her footing. She was now falling and when she fell, she saw tons of lights below when she looked down and then she realized that she fell off of a skyscraper.

The area around Hilda was nothing but the dark sky, the massive skyscraper she was falling from, and the city of Trolberg alive at night. Hilda screamed as she fell and while she was looking back at where she fell from, she noticed a black outline of a body falling out of the building as well.

The wind pushed up against Hilda’s nearly destroyed sweater and the city was getting closer as she fell what felt like hundreds of feet. Hilda did see that the figure that was falling positioned its body to go vertical and it made it fall down faster to Hilda’s direction. 

“Hilda!”

That voice instantly made Hilda know that it was Retail falling in her direction and soon after, the two made contact. Crashing into each other as they fell and the two managed to get a good position to not move around insanely.

“WHAT DO WE DO?!” Hilda yelled. 

“I’LL THINK OF SOMETHING!” Retail screamed. The two kept falling and falling and falling. Eventually, they both reached the city and it came clear to both women. Retail noticed the streetlamps on the roads and thought of an idea as they got close to the ground. 

“HANG ON!”

As the two reached the short buildings, Retail extended her right arm as Hilda hung on and then the arm grabbed the top of a random streetlamp. Instead of hitting the ground with the might of God, the two’s momentum sturred away from the ground and swung forwards.

To Retail’s surprise, the streetlamp decided to break off as they swung forwards and the two were on a collision course to the hard ground of the black road.

It was obviously going to hurt, but at least they weren’t falling as fast as the speed of a jet anymore. The two landed on the road with a hard impact and began rolling for what felt like a minute until their momentum slowed down. During the roll, Retail and Hilda separated.

Thankfully, the streets on this block were empty while Retail and Hilda just laid down on the road after falling and tumbling. Retail slowly got up and she walked her way to Hilda. 

“Hilda?”

All Retail could hear was Hilda’s breathing and she then kneeled to see a damaged teenager with a bleeding arm. Retail picked Hilda up and held her in her arms. 

“My arm hurts so much…”

“I know,” Retail said, and she then pulled out a red bag from her sweater’s lower pocket. 

“I got this. Stole it so I could do what I did to myself after being nailed.”

Retail then looked around and thought about the idea that someone could show up…. or even Rilda. 

“But not here….we need to get out of here, but I don’t know where to go.”

“What about home?” Hilda asked. 

“No. Someone would show up and harm us….dammit. Where to go...where to go…”

At that moment, Retail had an idea hatch: The Sparrow Scouts HQ. 

“I got it!” Retail said. 

“What?”

“The Sparrow Scouts HQ. We can go there. It’ll be away from the city and we’ll be alone to fix ourselves,” Retail answered, getting up after placing the med kit back in her sweater and then holding Hilda in her arms.

“How are we gonna travel with the crazies around?” Hilda lazily asked. 

“Rooftops,” Retail said and she then had to place Hilda down so she could extend her left arm to the edge of one of the rooftops. Once Retail did that, the two ascended to the rooftop and after some lifting, they made it up.

Retail then held up Hilda again with her both arms, holding her like a baby as she jumped from rooftop to rooftop in the direction of an old wooden building near the Huldrawood. The two were safe from Rilda, but without proper care, life itself would become dangerous to the two over time and Retail had to get there before they both bleed out.


	5. Blood & Gauze

Three hours after traveling across the city, Retail and Hilda made it to the hill that held the Sparrow Scouts HQ. When the two reached the building, Retail noticed the building was dark as the night. No cars in the parking lot, and nobody around.

Retail made it to the door while carrying Hilda and she kicked the door open. The entire area was nothing but darkness with bits of moonlight shining through the windows. All Retail could see with the moonlight was just the floor and the wall holding up the stage so she walked over to that wall and placed Hilda down with her back against it.

“Let’s take a look at this.” Retail grabbed Hilda’s left arm and saw it bleeding into her sweater as the nails stuck out like a sore thumb. 

“Fuck….”

“Ok...in order for me to examine the wounds and patch it up, I’ll have to take the nails out. You ready?” Hilda nodded at Retail’s question and then Retail used her fingers to grab the first nail, one closest to Hilda’s hand.

To Hilda’s agony, Retail pulled out the nail as screams echoed throughout the building. Retail moved on with the second nail once the first was out and it was agonizing to Hilda as more blood poured out of her arm. The third, fourth, and fifth were pulled out as quickly as possible and then Retail rolled up Hilda’s sleeve to see the holes in her arm. Her entire lower arm was covered in blood with contrasting colors of black from the holes.

The med kit now came into play. Retail opened it and pulled out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, unscrewing the cap. 

“Ok...just like what Mum taught me.”

Retail poured the peroxide all over Hilda’s arm and the holes in her arm started bubbling up white to clean out bacteria. Retail then screwed the cap back on the bottle, placed it back in the bag and looked around until she found gauze and a small rag. Retail wiped the peroxide off of Hilda’s arm along with the blood and then she wrapped Hilda’s lower arm with the gauze.

“Better?” Retail asked. 

“Yeah,” Hilda answered. 

“Alright. Now, let me look at your shoulder. You’re gonna have to take off that sweater.”

With Retail’s request, Hilda managed to take off her sweater to show her white shirt riddled in bullet holes. Retail then got a good look at Hilda’s shoulder and saw that it was stitched up. 

“Huh. That explains the blood bags.”

“What do you mean?” Hilda asked. 

“Rilda must have patched us up so we wouldn’t bleed out and die.”

“Why would she do that if she wants us dead?” Hilda asked again. 

“Most likely because she would want to hear us scream as she cuts us up. And because she hates me.”

Retail looked at the stitching and it looked good. No tears, no infection. Nothing. 

“It looks good, surprisingly. I’m surprised she knew our blood types. Probably tested it or some shit.”

Retail then rolled up her left sleeve to see that the stitches were perfectly fine. No infection either. However, Retail had to deal with three nails in her left shoulder so she used her right hand to pull out each nail from her body with more blood dripping out. Once that was done and the screams echoed, Retail took off her sweater to show her shirt covered in bullet holes in the same way as Hilda’s. Then Retail took the peroxide, opened it, and poured it on her shoulder only to clean off the white bubbles afterwards. The final step was being able to wrap the gauze around her shoulder and when she finished, she just laid down next to Hilda. 

“Done.”

While Retail laid down, she looked at her right shoulder and stitches that remained intact. 

“Thank god,” she said.

Despite her best efforts, there was one problem left: Retail’s hands. She looked at her hands and saw nothing but blood and cut marks on them from the knife blade she grabbed back in the skyscraper. So she grabbed the peroxide again and poured it on each of her hands which turned a lot of the red and black into white until she wiped it off. Then she wrapped her hands with the gauze, ending the clean up task.

The two just laid against the small stage wall as the moonlight shined and Hilda just tightly hugged Retail. Placing her head against her shoulder and hugging her. 

“I am so sorry.”

“For what?” Hilda said. 

“Keeping those damn photos. I didn’t know where to put them, otherwise, you’d find them.”

“Don’t be. God, that’s so awful,” Hilda said. 

“I know. I sure wasn’t going to let her hurt you that way or ever as long as I can help it.”

“I know that and thank you,” Hilda said. 

“That’s why I wanted to get your friends and family out. I didn’t want you to experience what I did.”

“Thank you,” Hilda softly said. 

“How are you feeling?” Retail asked. 

“Fine,” she said and Hilda then noticed her sweater. 

“Can you hand me my sweater?”

Retail grabbed Hilda’s sweater and handed over to her, Hilda then placed it back on and hugged Retail again afterward. 

“You think Mum could fix this?”

“I’m sure of it. Trust me, I feel terrible for my sweater too. I kept it ever since Mum gave it to me and I loved it.”

Hilda smiled at the memory of her birthday when Retail described how she felt about her own birthday. 

“Then that Barghest showed up at the party. Honestly, I don’t wish for that to change. Aside from my friends being gone, I’d want that changed. But I’d keep the powers.”

“I feel the same way about what happened to me too,” Hilda said. 

“I got my powers and...I met you,” she added and Retail smiled, only responding by placing her head against Hilda’s and hugging her.

The building was just silent. No screams, no creaks in the wood, nothing. 

“Retail?”

“Yeah?” Retail asked and Hilda’s smile grew as she rested her head on Retail. 

“I love you,” Hilda said and Retail’s heart warmed. So much so that she tightly hugged the younger version of herself. 

“I do too.”

With Retail’s remark, Hilda’s heart blushed and warmed as the two rested together in the place where it all started. The place where the party happened and the attack. 

“Just rest up for now. We’ll go after Rilda before dawn, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hilda answered and then thoughts about Rilda came back to her. The thought of possibly…. possibly losing Retail came to mind so Hilda tightened her hug. 

“What’s wrong?”

When Retail looked at Hilda’s face after placing her head on her shoulder, she realized what was wrong. Hilda didn’t want to lose Retail and that silent realization struck a cord with Retail’s heartstrings. 

“It’s alright. I don’t want you to go either. Trust me, I’ll keep you safe to my last dying breath.”

Hilda nodded softly. 

“What are we going to tell Mum when this is over?” Hilda asked and Retail started to think about that. What were they going to tell her? The fact that Retail’s family was slaughtered and she had nowhere to go anymore? 

“Everything,” Retail answered.

“Where will you go?” Hilda asked and Retail started to become depressed. 

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“Maybe….maybe you could stay with us forever? Hilda said and Retail’s eyes widened at that idea. 

“You know….I’d like that. I really would.”

“Hopefully Mum would agree to that, 'cause I can’t imagine being alone anymore,” Hilda mentioned.

“Yeah,” Retail said. 

“I’m glad I met you. Part of me is happy that this entire event even happened,” Hilda mentioned. 

“The Anomaly?”

“Yeah,” Hilda answered. 

“Ah...I’m glad I met you too, Shiftie,” Retail said. 

“So, what are we going to do later on?”

“We go back into the city once we recover, go back into the house with the TV on, and wait for the news to say something about Rilda. That’s my only idea.”

“I thought you said we couldn’t go back home?” Hilda said. 

“Yeah. When we were bleeding out. Now we can just deal with them with ease or avoid them entirely. We just needed that chance of someone showing up to be at zero percent.”

“I’m sure there’s a radio or something around here,” Hilda said, looking around to see a radio. 

“Jukebox. This place has a jukebox. Not a radio. I’m sure people have raided the place already. I hope they didn’t take the GameCube. That’d suck.”

“It would,” said Hilda. 

“You know I did think of getting a 360, but David talked about the red rings and all,” Hilda added. 

“Ha! I remember that. Yeah, I did get a GameCube of my own, and then I bought a PlayStation 3 when the Slim model was out.”

“Hmm?” Hilda asked in confusion. 

“Oh, right. We’re four years apart in different worlds. Ok….in a few months from now if the world doesn’t end, PlayStation 3 will come out and it would be overpriced as hell. Then in 2009, the Slim model came out and I got that instead, with Bioshock and such. It was fun. Yeah, Uncharted was fun too. I miss it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hilda replied. 

“Like I said, we’re four years apart from different worlds. Maybe everything I said won’t happen. Who knows.”

The two just rested for a few moments without even saying a new sentence for each other until Retail finally capped it all off with “Just get some rest. We’ll go before dawn.”

Before dawn came and after Retail got her sweater back on, Hilda and Retail got the rest they needed and began walking back into the city towards their home while climbing rooftops to get by people. As the sun was beginning to rise, the two arrived back at home and climbed through Hilda’s window to see that the house wasn’t ransacked at all. It was broken into, but nothing was taken except for all the knives. Those were all gone.

“GameCube’s safe,” Retail said. 

“Thank god,” Hilda replied as she looked through the house, seeing if anything was taken.

“Nothing is taken at all except for the kitchen knives,” Hilda mentioned, and Retail said the same thing, so the two sat down on the couch and turned on the TV, waiting for the news to say anything new about Rilda. 

“The only way we’ll know of her presence is another tragedy.”

“Sadly,” Hilda said and she leaned up against Retail’s shoulder, resulting in her tensing up in pain for a moment. 

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s alright. Come here,” Retail suggested, placing her left arm over Hilda’s shoulder and pulling her close as they watched the news for any new information. The morning kicked off with the news talking about the deaths, the building destruction, Hilda & Retail, and Rilda herself with the details known.

For hours upon hours, nothing came up on the news. Just nothing. Hilda did get impatient from being inside for so long, but Retail insisted to stay and watch. Retail ended up making cucumber sandwiches and they enjoyed what felt like it was going to be their last meal while they waited for anything new to appear on the news. Any new sightings, new disasters, anything.

Then in the afternoon where the sky was filled with grey and what looked like fog, a loud explosion happened from a far distance with a crumbling sound following. 

“Did you hear that?” Hilda asked.

“Yep,” Retail said, walking towards the window in Hilda’s bedroom and peeking her head out to see a massive array of smoke coming near the Trolberg Lake.

“Hilda, I think we know where to go,” Retail said, climbing out of the window and walking on the fire escape. 

“Oh no.”

“Yep. It happened and now it’s time,” Retail said, looking at the smoke like if it’s the end of the world and Hilda showing hesitation and fear for Retail to take notice afterward. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I just wish I could see Mum and Dad again,” Hilda said, and Retail didn’t even respond at first until she pulled her close for a hug. 

“You will. If I die out there or if we can’t save the world, just run to the house and wish for it to be unbreakable.”

Retail then slowly pulled Hilda out of the window and placed her on her feet while hugging her. 

“Once this is over, I will take you there myself.”

“What about you?” Hilda asked. 

“What about me?” Retail confusingly said. 

“I don’t….I don’t want to lose you. I love you so much.”

Retail didn’t know what to say to that. She just looked at the smoke with a hopeless look to her face and then looked back to see the young Hilda hugging her like if she was her mother. 

“Hilda.”

Hilda then looked directly at Retail’s face. 

“If I die, don’t worry. I’ll be at peace with Mum and Dad.”

“But I don’t want you to! I just...I just want a sister. You’re the closest I’ve ever got to having one,” Hilda said to Retail’s surprise. Hilda referring to Retail as her own sister? They’re not biological sisters or twins, but it was such a shock that Hilda thought of Retail as her sister now to where she didn’t know what to do. Then the idea became more and more loving due to the time they spent together learning and caring for each other. So Retail kneeled and hugged Hilda with all her loving affection. 

“You are my sister,” she said, to Hilda’s tearful surprise.

The two eventually separated while holding hands, looking at the disaster miles ahead of them. Retail looked at Hilda and saw tears running down her face so she wiped her tears away with her sweater. 

“When Rilda is dead, I will walk you to the house. I promise you that.”

“I hope so, Retail,” Hilda softly said. 

“I swear on Mum’s grave,” Retail answered. The two climbed up to the roof together, saw all the rooftops all around the city, and began their journey towards the smoke and now slightly visible fire. They knew what was ahead, but they were patched up and were ready to fight. It was going to take all their strength, energy, and bravery to put a stop to Rilda. An end, once and for all.


	6. Hell

It took about two hours to reach the smokey mess and when the two got there while on top of another roof, they saw a massive destruction site with tons of bodies and people helping each other out within the fog. Rubble everywhere, body parts scattered, blood across some of the rubble, fire going around, and Rilda standing on top of everything, just watching in anger.

Rilda looked like she was a ball of fire in rage while holding both a nail gun and a long knife. She was ready to kill anyone she sees if they go against her will, and she was ready to kill the two girls when given the chance.

“My god,” Retail whispered to herself. 

“So what are we going to do?” Hilda questioned. 

“Let me think.”

Retail looked around and she then saw a woman standing alone near an alleyway just below the building the girls are standing on that wore a belt. 

“Got it. We go down there and take that woman’s belt.”

“Why?” Hilda asked and Retail’s face went blank. 

“Rilda is a marra, so we can capture her easily with a leather belt, and then I can stab her in the fucking face with her own knife.”

“That’s if this all goes to plan,” Hilda said. 

“I know. I don’t know what I’m going to do if it doesn’t.”

Retail hopped off the roof, using her right hand as a grapple to rappel down to the ground, with Hilda following. The two landed in an alleyway and the area around them was covered in thick fog. They could still see the people and part of their surroundings mostly, but it could be a good cover to keep them hidden from Rilda by being far away.

Retail snuck up behind the woman and she then quickly grabbed her in a chokehold while placing her hand over her mouth as she panicked. 

“It’s us. Calm down,” Retail whispered and the woman became hostile towards the two, since they’re targets to Rilda. So Retail had no choice but to choke her out and place her body on the ground. 

“Well, that fucking went well.”

Retail unbuckled the woman’s belt and took it off her. It was black, leather, and lengthy. 

“Got it,” Retail said to Hilda. 

“I hope she’s alright.”

“She’s fine. She’ll wake up and tell someone about us, but by the time she does, Rilda will be dead.”

“Good,” Hilda finished. 

“So...where do we go now?” Hilda asked, and Retail began walking down the alley away from the destruction. 

“We go behind the site, sneak up to Rilda, and cut her throat open.”

“Sounds good,” Hilda replied and followed Retail into the dirty alleyways. Retail then took a turn to the right, leading into a new and foggy alleyway down in the direction of the mess without actually walking in it. 

“So what will I do when we pin her down?”  
“You’re going to hold her down while I kill her. It’s going to be quick, but she deserves a painful death.”

“Without a doubt,” Hilda replied to Retail’s surprise. 

“Ah, so you’re now agreeing with my philosophy?”

“When it comes to Rilda, yeah. I understand why. If I was eleven, I would cry like a baby to stop you,” Hilda explained.

“I would too. Hopefully you won’t have to deal with a burning Earth like I did. I got lucky and ended up here thanks to some cosmic coincidence.”

“So The Anomaly basically came to Rilda first, and then you?” Hilda asked. 

“Yeah. That sounds about right. The fact that Rilda was faster than a universe’s second big bang should say something. I bet it’s still happening right now in other worlds and others are just waiting without even knowing about it.”

“Figures,” Hilda said as the two traveled through the alleys. Eventually, they made it to the city streets with the lake’s beach being right in front of them, ahead of the street block and the mob of people were all the way back where the front of the rubble is. 

“Nobody around… wait, there’s a corpse there,” Retail said, when looking around and she noticed a mangled corpse on the ground. Most likely cause is that Rilda killed him.

Retail also saw the rubble being climbable along with Rilda being on top of it, looking to the right, not even noticing the two in the fog at all. 

“There you are, motherfucker,” Retail said to herself.

“Here. Take this,” Retail mentioned and handed over the belt to Hilda.

“You climb up and ring this around her neck. Then I disarm her and cut her up into tiny pieces.”

“Alright,” Hilda said, and the two girls began walking towards the rubble, hearing the screams and sounds of fighting going on amongst the people of Trolberg. The rubble looked like a destroyed staircase. Tall and wide, yet climbable.

The two began climbing while trying to not make a sound at all, but with the screaming and burning going on, it suppressed their climb. The two went around the rubble to the left so they could show up behind Rilda.

They climbed for what felt like two minutes and they reached the top. It was rocky, foggy, and just had Rilda sitting down on a flat rock. She didn’t even flinch at all as she rested.

Hilda walked slowly with Retail following behind her while crouched down. The two kept sneaking up behind Rilda, and when Hilda was right behind her, the teenager wrapped the belt around the woman’s neck, placed the other end of the belt in the buckle, and pulled back as hard as she could to choke her out.

Retail immediately grabbed Rilda’s arms and held them down as she walked up to her, as Hilda kept pulling down to choke Rilda.

Before Retail could lock down Rilda’s legs, she kicked Retail with such force that it sent both her and Hilda tumbling down the rock wall all the way down to the beach. Rilda got up, and before she could shoot Hilda in the head, Retail grabbed Rilda’s left arm and pulled it away from Hilda’s direction as the nail gun fired.

Retail also attempted to disarm Rilda, but then Rilda used telekinesis to pull Retail towards her and slam her on the ground, along with Rilda’s foot over Retail’s neck. Hilda extended her arm out, and to Rilda’s surprise, she disarmed her and took the nail gun away.

Rilda took notice, and she used the telekinesis to pull Retail off the ground after lifting her foot off her neck. Rilda then held Retail like a hostage with a knife to her throat as Hilda took aim.

With Rilda’s powers, Retail couldn’t move or do anything to save herself from this predicament. Aside from Rilda’s right hand, her entire body was behind Retail, along with her head behind Retail's so Hilda can’t kill her. “So this is how it ends!”

Hilda aimed the nail gun at both Rilda and Retail, yet the only thing she could possibly shoot is Rilda’s right hand or arm going over Retail’s neck. “You kill her or I kill her, and then I kill you. Simple, yet a win win for me.”

Retail noticed what Hilda was trying to do, and her nerves went down and she accepted what could happen if Hilda is a good shot. 

“Well? Are you going to shoot your friend or am I going to have to kill her for you?”

Hilda focused on her aim, readied herself to shoot Rilda’s hand, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger and sent a nail straight into Rilda’s right hand. Rilda screamed as she lost her mental grasp on Retail, along with dropping the knife. Retail grabbed the knife with her left hand and stabbed Rilda in the gut with it.

“Got you, motherfucker! I finally fucking got you,” Retail said as she twisted the knife in Rilda’s gut and before Retail could do anymore damage, a massive wave of water overwhelmed everyone. Everyone on the beach ended up underwater due to the massive wave from out of nowhere and pulled towards the lake itself.

Retail lost her grip on the knife, Hilda lost the nail gun and the water dragged it away, and Rilda was pulled further into the lake. Once the wave calmed down, Retail and Hilda got up. 

“What the hell just happened?” Hilda asked.

“Rilda and fucking telekinesis!” Retail screamed and she noticed the nail gun just a few feet ahead of her. Retail got up, walked over to the nail gun, and grabbed it. 

“Alright...now where are you?” Retail said to herself and to both of the girl’s surprise, another massive wave was being made along with Rilda appearing above the water.

Rilda looked like a bloody mess with blood all over the lower area of her shirt and the knife that was used against her was covered in a red tint. To what Retail could see, Rilda also had a nail in her right hand as well, that caused her hand to bleed.

Retail aimed the nail gun and as she steadied her aim toward Rilda’s head. Rilda placed the knife’s blade in her hands and then threw the knife directly into Retail’s gut, causing Retail to lose her aim and fall into the water as the wave built over both her and Hilda.

The wave then took both Retail and Hilda underwater. All Retail saw was both darkness and the white lights from the surface of the water as she weakly looked around and then noticed the knife in her gut as blood seeped out into the water. She could just sleep and just let it all go, but that wasn’t her goal. Despite the circumstances, Retail wasn’t going to give up and die just like that, so she grabbed the knife with her left hand and pulled it out of her gut.

Retail looked around and saw Hilda swimming towards the surface, so she followed, swimming until she made it to the top and rejoined Hilda to hold her close. 

“Oh thank god!”

The two went underwater again and then they pushed back up to the surface. 

“What are we going to do?!”

“I got an idea! Just grow!” Retail yelled. 

“What do you mean?” Hilda yelled out as the water raged on. 

“Remember when I said you couldn’t grow massive before the bus crash?”

“Yeah!” Hilda remembered. 

“No restrictions here! Just do it, I hold onto you, and I shoot this bitch with this!” Retail suggested and showed Hilda the nail gun.

“Alright. Grab onto something!” Hilda suggested. 

“Just put me in your hand and I’ll take care of the rest! Besides, I have a knife on me as well!”

Hilda prepared herself with remembering how Retail taught her how to size shift. Just think and keep yourself in check. She began to grow in size and she placed Retail in her right hand, holding her up so she could stand on her feet. Eventually, Hilda grew enough that she could stand on the lake’s floor and take on the massive waves as a giant.

As Hilda walked towards closer to a now visible Rilda in astonishment as the teenager’s size, Hilda was descending into the water to the point where only her upper half was visible and the water was up to her belly. Retail couldn’t really see a good sight of Rilda so she decided to run up Hilda’s arm, place the knife in her back pocket, and grab onto Hilda’s massive sweater with her left hand to hold on.

Now Retail got a good view of Rilda controlling the waves with all of her mental might. Retail aimed the nail gun to try to shoot Rilda in the head, but with how shaky everything was due to the waves, it would be nearly impossible to pull off.

Rilda intensified the waves which made Hilda even more shaky as she walked towards Rilda and Retail focused on her aim. As Rilda was intensifying the waves, Hilda used her left arm to attempt to attack Rilda, but Rilda would move out of the way.

Eventually, Retail took the first shot and it missed. The second shot went out and it struck Rilda in the right shoulder. Retail kept firing and one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven shots of nails all struck Rilda all over her body. Retail pulled the trigger again and noticed that the nail gun was out of nails. “Fuck it!”

Retail threw the nail gun away and began to climb up Hilda’s arm to get to her head. Once Retail made it to Hilda’s shoulder, she stood up and stumbled for a moment because of her gut injury. 

“Hilda!”

Hilda acknowledged Retail without saying anything. 

“I need you to throw me at Rilda!”

“Are you serious?! What if she grabs you?” Hilda asked. 

“Distract her!” Hilda took in Retail’s suggestion and she began moving through the waves faster to get near Rilda as Retail managed to get back to Hilda’s right hand.

Hilda used her left arm to attack Rilda, but like always, Rilda dodged the slow attacks and used the waves to cause Hilda to fall into the water. Despite Rilda’s attempts, Hilda kept her balance as she was readying Retail to be thrown. Meanwhile, Retail equipped the knife to her left hand and prepared herself.

Hilda then prepared her right arm by closing her fist, lifting her arm, and then throwing Retail towards Rilda’s direction as Hilda used her other arm to keep Rilda’s attention. Retail flew across the psychotic battlefield with her hands ready to both grab Rilda and stab her to death.

When Retail finally reached Rilda, to the monster’s surprise, Retail grabbed onto Rilda’s neck with her right hand and she began stabbing Rilda all over the body with the knife. Hilda just watched as Retail let all of her rage out against Rilda as the monster tried to get Retail off her, but with her becoming weaker with each stab, the waves started to calm down and the two women ended up falling into the lake after Rilda lost her focus of flight.

Hilda looked around to find the two in the water, but nothing came up as the waves slowly became back to normal, along with Hilda slowly shrinking back down to normal size.

When she shrunk back down, she moved towards the now clear beach. Once she made it back to the beach, she was alone. 

“Retail!”

There was no response. Just sounds of the water and Hilda’s breathing…. until both Retail and Rilda appeared screaming as they rose from the water while fighting. Retail was covered in her own blood as she still held the knife and Rilda was drenched in her blood as she backed away from Retail.

Rilda had stab marks all over her body and she was bleeding from every single stab. Her clothes were ruined and her face showed fear for the first time ever.

Hilda got up and she ran as fast as possible to join the fight, and when she arrived, the two went to war.

Retail extended her right arm, grabbed Rilda, and pulled her so she could stab her until Rilda decided to put up a fight. Rilda dodged the attempted stab and struck Retail in the face.

Before Rilda could do any more damage, Hilda arrived to jump up on top of Rilda’s back and she pulled back on her neck which made Rilda back up constantly. Rilda did try to use her telekinesis to hold Retail back, but with her being too weak, she was completely powerless.

Retail ran towards Rilda with the knife and she stabbed her in the gut again with the knife, pushing both Rilda and Hilda into the water as Hilda let her grip go. When Hilda got out of the water, she saw Retail on top of Rilda trying to shove the knife into her woman’s chest despite Rilda holding back by grabbing Retail’s left hand and pushing as hard as she can to keep the knife away.

Hilda then took notice of Rilda trying to use her legs to attack Retail, so Hilda ran over and held Rilda’s legs in the water with all of her strength.

Retail used all of her strength to jam the knife into Rilda’s chest and she succeeded as Rilda screamed in agony. Retail then decided to grab Rilda’s hair and force the woman’s face into the water, beginning to drown her as Retail twisted the knife, while Rilda used her hands to try to fight against Retail with no success no matter how hard she would fight.

With both girls on top of her, Rilda’s struggling increased as her lungs were starting to burn from the lack of oxygen, and no matter how hard she tried to get out of the water, Retail kept Rilda’s head under the water.

Rilda’s movements began to slow down. Her face becoming tired, her body bleeding out, and her lungs burning to the point where she couldn’t properly function. Retail’s twisted sense of revenge seemed to be working out despite the injuries she received, but it didn’t matter. Retail and Hilda were winning this fight and that was all that mattered.

After a minute of struggling, Rilda’s strength gave out. Her arms fell into the water, her face looked asleep, and the water around her was contaminated with blood. To Retail, it was clear that she drowned the monster that killed billions. Billions of people and her own family. To make sure Rilda was drowned, Retail kept her strength up for another minute until she was confident that it was over.

Hilda let go of Rilda’s legs and she slowly walked up to Retail. All she saw was Retail looking at Rilda’s drowned body. Then out of nowhere, Retail took the knife out of Rilda’s chest and slammed the knife into Rilda’s face multiple times to Hilda’s shock.

Retail just kept stabbing and stabbing until Rilda’s face was unrecognizable for an entire minute, and when she reached her breaking point, Retail was exhausted and gave up after leaving the knife in Rilda’s skull.

Retail just looked at the gory disaster she caused. To her, it was beautiful. Like a masterpiece on canvas. To Hilda, it was murder… and well deserved revenge. Retail slowly got up, and she started walking to the beach when she noticed the beach and the street block leading to the beach along with the massive rubble featuring hundreds of people from the city pointing guns at the two girls.

Hilda soon noticed as well and was overwhelmed with the amount of people standing around with guns ready to kill the two and to her surprise, Retail just grabbed Hilda’s right hand and closed her eyes.

They knew what was about to happen, so Hilda joined Retail and closed her eyes as well. The two just stood there, ready to be riddled with bullets to reopen their wounds and make them bleed out. Despite that being the most likely scenario, nothing happened.

Hilda opened her eyes to see that the citizens were lowering their guns due to the sight of Rilda’s corpse, the blood in the water and the knife. Then Retail opened her eyes to see that they were being spared and soon after, the entire city was just staring at them.

So Retail began walking towards the beach, and Hilda began following her. The two reached the beach and many people were making 911 phone calls at a couple of payphones or their own flip phones due to Retail’s gut injury. Retail took this as an opportunity to get help so she looked at Hilda and kneeled. 

“I’m going to get this taken care of….go to Mum.”

“No, I’m coming with you,” Hilda said. 

“Hilda, stop. We would’ve been dead by now if these people were hostile and I need help. Just….just go.”

Hilda looked at Retail right in the eyes for a few moments and she then tightly hugged her. Hilda didn’t care if she was going to get blood all over her sweater, it was already ruined to begin with. 

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” Retail said and the two separated from the hug as the sound of sirens came blaring along with red and blue lights contrasting the fog. 

“I’ll be ok. Just go. You’ll know where to find me.”

Hilda nodded and she walked over to the concrete wall to the surprise of people offering to pull Hilda up to the street level so she took the offer from two random civilians.

As Hilda began her journey towards the House of Want, she saw ambulances arrive along with paramedics running past her to take care of Retail. It wasn’t the time to worry, it was now time to bring the family back to the city so Hilda began walking down the street in the direction to the Trolberg gate.

During the long journey, Hilda started running down the street to see hundreds of people looking at her. Running past people who are either normal, Anomalized, etc.

Hilda just kept running and running and running without any breaks at all and she realized that running in the streets wasn’t going to cut it so she ran into a random alley and saw a fire escape.

She jumped up as high as she could and grabbed the ladder on the fire escape, pulling herself up and she ran up the fire escape to jump up onto the roof of the building to see hundreds of buildings in the city with only a faint image of the city’s gates.

Hilda just went for it and jumped across each and every building, using the tricks that Retail taught her along the way and within several hours, she finally made it to the city gates. Without hesitation, she extended her arms to the top of the gate and rappelled up the wall. When Hilda made it past the gate, she flung herself off the wall and landed on the ground in a rolling motion until she managed to get her footing and continue her endless cycle of running.

The constant nature of being on the run kept Hilda going for hours, running through the massive grassy plain of nature and into the massive forest. Hilda just kept running past everything she saw and jumped over any obstruction in her way without stops until she finally made it to the House of Want.

Hilda was covered in sweat from running for so long and she finally stopped. Hilda took deep breaths and when she was done, she started to walk to the door as her heart was pounding. When Hilda made it to the door, she knocked and then she realized that the House of Want locks people in so she opened the door herself and she saw Alfur on the other side.

When the two reunited, they didn’t say a word to each other and Alfur hugged his daughter immediately. 

“I missed you so much.”

“I know, Dad. I know,” Hilda softly said. 

“It’s over,” Hilda added and Alfur looked at Hilda and noticed all the blood and marks all over her body. 

“HILDA!”

Hilda looked past Alfur’s shoulder and saw everyone in the house running to greet Hilda. Johanna, Twig, David, Frida, and their parents. Everyone had their moment to be with Hilda, shared their questions about what happened and Hilda told the truth. Everything. After an hour of explanations, Hilda was exhausted. 

“So where’s Retail now?” Johanna asked. 

“She’s in the hospital right now. I hope she’s ok. God, I hope she’s ok…”

“Well, let’s go there right now,” Johanna said. 

“You’re going to have to carry me on the way. I’m done running for a long time”

“Sure thing,” Johanna said and she picked up Hilda with both of her arms. Afterward, Johanna started walking back in the direction of the city and everyone followed.

The crew slowly traveled across the land for several hours along with people asking Hilda questions. Twig did manage to jump up onto Hilda’s belly and sleep on her as the crew traveled as well.

After several hours the sun was beginning to set, the crew made it back to Trolberg and noticed that the gates were opened so they just walked back in to see that nobody was hostile towards Hilda at all as they walked in the direction of where the Trolberg hospital is.

The crew finally made it to the hospital when the night was beginning to set and everyone, including staff, knew who they were there to see so they let them into one of the rooms to see Retail on a white bed in a gown.

Hilda took notice of Retail's sweater being placed on a chair. 

“Hey,” Retail said. Hilda got off of Johanna’s arms with Twig hopping off and she then walked over to the bed.

“You alright?” Hilda asked. 

“Yeah. I’m fine. They finished doing an operation on me so that’s why I’m in this. I’m gonna be staying here for a few days, but I’ll be ok.”

Then out of nowhere, a random male doctor walked into the room. 

“Hilda?” Both Retail and Hilda looked at the doctor. 

“Yes?” Both Retail and Hilda said, then the two looked at each other afterwards. 

“I mean the other Hilda,” he said and it was clear that he was talking to Hilda herself. Not Retail. 

“Yeah?”

“You obviously had some injuries so I need you to come with me,” he mentioned and Hilda turned back to Retail. 

“Are you going to be fine?”

“I’ll be fine. Just get treatment and go home,” Retail said and Hilda began to back away from the bed. 

“I love you, sis.”

Hilda then joined the doctor and left the room. 

“Sis? What did she mean by that?” Alfur asked. “Sisters. I guess in a twisted sense, I’m her surrogate sister.”

“You know… I wouldn’t mind that, really,” Johanna said, to Retai’s surprise. 

“What?”

“I’ve been thinking about you, and… with how close you two have gotten… it’d be a good idea to have you around. Forever.”

“She told you everything? About….my mum?” Retail asked, and she began to get tears in her eyes from something that she thought would never happen. 

“...Yes. Everything, and I don’t blame you for keeping that hidden from her until you two were taken. So in a way….what if we adopt you?”

Retail took that idea in and she couldn’t believe it. The idea of Johanna and Alfur becoming her adoptive parents is like if she never lost her family to begin with and to everyone’s surprise, Retail couldn’t hold back her emotions from that idea and started sobbing.

Both Johanna and Alfur walked over and hugged Retail as she let her emotions out for once. 

“Thank you so much,” Retail said as she sobbed while hugging the two. The room only had the sounds of Retail sobbing and after several minutes, she finally calmed down and laid her head back on the bed. 

“This can’t be real.”

“It is. Hilda would love to have you as her sister and you kept her safe. You earned this and I’m proud of you. With what happened to your world, we can make up for it with having you with us like if you’re part of the family,” Johanna explained.

“That’d be great! That’d be great,” Retail said as tears poured down her eyes. 

“And yes, you can call me Mum.”

That was the moment that made Retail break down again. Just her sobbing while laying in her bed as everyone approached the bed to comfort her. With Rilda dead and the world saved, Retail earned what she never thought she would earn in her life: A family. Not just any family, but Johanna and Alfur along with Hilda being her sister. It felt like it was too good to be true, but it was true and Retail was free from her pain. Her suffering was now gone.


	7. Reliving

A few days have passed since Retail’s official adoption into the family along with Frida and David and their families going back home. Hilda got a series of check ups with her injuries and she was let go after being taken care of by professionals after some operations took place for her.

Just like Retail, Hilda was patched up and the two were released at the same time. Both women ended up with several scars on their bodies. Retail suffered the worst of it because of her belly showing a massive scar across it from being stabbed in the gut. Thankfully, their faces had no scaring at all, aside from some bruises.

When the two were released, Johanna and Alfur picked them up and drove them back home. Retail didn’t talk much, other than hold Hilda in her arms along with looking out the window, seeing Super Woffs.

As for Trolberg, the city praised the two girls as heroes for saving them from Rilda. The city didn’t have to live in fear or follow Rilda’s horrific orders anymore. Even the hospital never sent any bills because the girls basically saved the world.

The city itself had to be repaired with massive clean up crews and even memorial events for the people who died during Rilda’s attack on the city. To Trolberg, the disaster is known as “The Red & The White.” Meaning all the blood spilled on the ground, and the white rubble of the city buildings.

The crew made it back home and went inside to see the house like it always was. Just home sweet home.

“It’s good to be back,” Retail said. Both Retail and Hilda were in a brand new set of clothes as they held their sweaters. 

“Yeah, it is,” Hilda mentioned as Johanna took notice of the sweaters. 

“Let me see those.”

Both Retail and Hilda gave Johanna their sweaters and she saw holes everywhere. 

“Maybe I could fix this. I’m not sure, but if I can’t, then it can be replaced.”

“That works,” said Retail and Johanna placed the sweaters on the couch. 

“Also. Retail...get over here. You too, Alfur.”

Everyone except for Hilda got together in front of her to her surprise. 

“What’s going on?”

“Hilda, while you were being taken care of, we decided to adopt Retail into the family as one of our own,” Johanna explained to Hilda’s astonishment. Hilda looked over to Retail for a dose of reality, but all she got from her was 

“I’m your surrogate sister.”

Hilda took this information in with her jaw on the floor. Johanna just accepted Retail as her own. Like if she had twins. So in response, Hilda ran over and hugged Retail tightly. 

“Hey, hey, hey! That’s my gut you're squishing, there!”

“Oh! Sorry,” Hilda said, separating from the hug with tears in her eyes. Hilda then noticed a poke at her left leg and noticed it was Twig with his tongue slightly out in a funny way which made Hilda laugh.

“I….I don’t even know what to say,” Hilda said. 

“You don’t have to say anything at all,” Alfur finished, and then an idea came to Hilda. 

“I got an idea: How about we speedrun Luigi’s Mansion again to celebrate?”

“That sounds like fun,” Retail accepted. 

“Yeah, that sounds great,” Alfur joined in and then Johanna joined in on the party as well. Even Twig wanted in on the fun by jumping into Hilda’s arms.

Everyone went into the bedroom and the two girls booted up the GameCube to speedrun through Luigi’s Mansion again. They knew where all the Boos were, they knew where all the keys were, they were ready to rescue Mario for the hundredth time.

It took the two the entire day to speedrun the game as everyone else watched, making jokes about the various Boos in the game along with talking about an infamous glitch in the game that prevents you from making progress if you leave a room without picking up a key.

When they finished the game, the night had already set and all they could see was the glow of the TV when the credits rolled. 

“Alrighty. I’m going to get some sleep here. You three figure your stuff out,” Johanna said while getting up and walking towards the door. 

“Wait,” Retail said, and she got up.

Johanna then noticed a tight hug from Retail and she hugged back. 

“Thank you. Thank you, Mum.”

“You’re welcome, Hilda,” Johanna said. The two eventually separated from the hug and Johanna left the room. When Retail turned around, she saw both Hilda and Alfur hugging. But before she could walk over and talk to them, Twig showed up and jumped into Retail’s arms and then licked her in the face. 

“Ok, boy. Calm down.”

When Hilda and Alfur noticed Twig licking Retail’s face, they both started laughing at the sight and then Retail joined in on the laughter. 

“Ok, this is cute,” Retail said and Twig finally stopped licking her.

“I need some rest too and I’m sure you two need some time together,” Alfur said, getting up until Hilda grabbed his hand. 

“Why not sleep with us?”

“No, no. I’m sure you need time together. Maybe tomorrow we all can sleep together if that bed can hold us again.”

“Alright. Fine,” Hilda said, letting go of Alfur, and he then walked to Retail. Alfur looked at Retail at first and then hugged her. 

“Welcome to the family, sweetie.”

“Thanks,” Retail said, before Alfur separated and then walked out of the room, closing the door.

Hilda turned off the GameCube, walked over to the bed, and got in. 

“Come on, Retail.”

“Alright, Shiftie,” said Retail and she and Twig joined Hilda in bed. Both Retail and Hilda cuddled up together. 

“You ok? I’m not hurting your gut?”

“No. I’m fine. Just don’t push up against me and I’ll be fine,” Retail said and then Twig joined in on the cuddling.

“Hey, boy,” Hilda said, petting the Deerfox. 

“So, with Rilda dead and you being my sister officially, what are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe 7-Eleven could give me a promotion for saving the world, but I just…. I’m just satisfied where I am right now. In this bed with you, talking and cuddling. It’s a good feeling.”

“Yeah,” Hilda said. 

“It feels great to be in my bed too,” Retail said to Hilda’s confusion and she realized her mistake. 

“Our bed, right.”

“Thank you,” Hilda began. 

“For everything?” Retail asked, and Hilda nodded her head. 

“I wanted you to be ready and not be what I turned into….but I guess everything that happened to me doesn’t matter now. Mum is alive, Alfur is fine, Twig is right here breathing, and Frida and David are fine. The most important detail being that Rilda is dead. So I’m in a good place now. I’d have to thank you too.”

“I guess we’re both welcome then,” Hilda said. 

“Yep,” Retail finished. 

“I guess we could be up for seeing Frida and David again tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but first, I need sleep,” Retail said and she closed her eyes. Hilda moved up closer to Retail and she laid her head on the woman’s shoulder while hugging her. 

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” Retail said and she began to drift off to sleep. After several minutes, both Retail and Hilda fell asleep and entered their dreams.

* * *

The world of Trolberg went back to “normal” after the events Rilda caused. Schools reopened, everyone was safe again, and Retail actually got a promotion at 7-Eleven as manager for saving the world and also being a good employee as well.

People went back to work, buildings were rebuilt, lives were reformed again. Hilda and Retail ended up being closer than ever along with the family that accepted Retail into the family as one of their own. Hilda, Retail, Twig, Frida, and David all went on occasional adventures around the city uncovering hidden secrets like always and life felt like it was finally getting back to normal. Especially when Johanna managed to stitch up the sweaters and give them back to the girls. Like if “The Anomaly” never happened and if Rilda never showed up. In the end, “The Anomaly” might have done the opposite of what most people would say it did. To Hilda, it was an improvement. An improvement to have both her powers, the safety of the world in check, and a sister. Two people who would go to the ends of the Earth to protect each other. Even if it meant losing their own life to save another.


End file.
